by Zippety Doodah

Created on: December 29, 2006   Last Updated: April 28, 2007

Several nights ago, my friend got a phone call around midnight. The person on the other end asked for her by name and then proceeded to talk to her as if he knew her, but he didn't identify himself. It wasn't long before he was making professions of undying love for her. She, of course, hung up. The next night the same thing happened. And the next.

My friend is a confident, capable single woman who lives alone. She's not one to jump at her shadow - quite the opposite, in fact - but this had her spooked. Fortunately, she has easy access to a resource that the caller undoubtedly wasn't expecting; her fiance's a state trooper. He told her what to do, and I want to share it with you because it's something any of us could do but I sure never knew about it.

He told her that the next time the guy called, after she hung up to pick up the phone and immediately dial *57. What that does is traces the number, even if it's blocked, and sends it to the phone company. After you dial, you just stay on the phone and wait until you hear the voice that says the trace has been completed. There is a charge for the service and only the phone company gets the information, not the caller, but after two successful traces, the police have enough to work with to successfully subpoena the phone companies for the information.

Turns out in my friend's case, the calls came from a cell phone and a residential phone. she got two traces on each. When the police paid a call to the house, they apparantly didn't have to ask a lot of questions before the 15 and 20 year old brothers who lived there confessed to making nightly calls to 6 women randomly chosen out of the Buffalo phone book over the last two weeks. The calls have stopped, and my friend's back to sleeping at night, although she did admit to me today that she's still putting heavy chairs infront of all the doors leading outside before she goes to bed at night. She thinks she will for another night or two.

Although both of them, especially the 20 year old, should have known better, my suspicion is that neither of them was aware of how frightened and threatened the women felt. Hopefully the appearance of the police and the humiliation of being arrested will open their eyes and they'll learn not to DO THAT with no real harm being done.

I hope I'm never in a similar situation, but I was glad to learn about the *57 thing just in case. I also passed the information along to my teenaged progeny (who have been known to make a prank call or two) as another reason why they oughta think twice before they dial. Now they know that they're NOT necessarily anonymous and they get to couple that data with something I've previously pointed out. The rule in our family is that I'll drop everything if they have a medical emergency, but if they get arrested, they're just gonna have to wait until I've finished whatever I've commited to do that day before they'll see me. Two more situations I hope I'm never in.

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