The quick actions of a Turner Valley teen caught in a frightening situation last winter has made her a local hero.
Fifteen-year-old Andrea Lafont was presented with an award at the 911 Heroes Awards ceremony in Calgary April 7 for her brave actions when the SUV she and her three-year-old cousin were sitting in was stolen.
Plaques and certificates are given to youths ages 16 and under by Calgary 911 each year to recognize their heroic acts.
Lafont said she and her cousin were in the back seat waiting for their cousin and his fiancé to use the washroom in Calgary’s northeast on Jan. 15 when a man jumped into the vehicle and put it into drive.
“I totally blanked out,” she recalls. “I was in shock, I froze.”
The teen said the man didn’t realize the pair were in the vehicle until her young cousin asked the man who he was. This caught the thief by surprise.
“He told us he wasn’t getting put away for kidnapping,” she said. “He pulled over to the side of the road and told us to get out.”
Lafont moved fast, unbuckling her cousin from his car seat and getting her cousin’s dog Rosie from the front passenger seat.
“He was just telling me to ‘get out,’ ‘get out,’” she said.
When the thief drove away, Lafont make the quick decision to call 911.
“I had to sit down and calm myself,” she said. “I was just shocked.”
Lafont gave a description of the man to a 911 operator. She learned he was apprehended about a month later.
To this day, Lafont said she has no idea how the thief didn’t notice her in the backseat.
“I have bright blond hair so I’m pretty noticeable from far away,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘How did you not see me?”
Lafont is bashful from the attention she’s been getting. She was interviewed by numerous media outlets since receiving the award.
“I didn’t really know that it was going to be this big of an award,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why does everyone want to talk to me?’ This thing wasn’t that big.”
Her mom Nicole thinks differently.
“She was trying to minimize it and I was trying to tell her this is a big thing,” she said. “They (911 dispatch) get millions of calls and to pick her is a big honour.”
Nicole said she is not surprised by her daughter’s quick thinking that day.
“She’s pretty level headed and she did what was best for her cousin,” she said. “I wouldn’t have expected anything different from her. She did a good job.”
Like many moms, Lafont has already gotten to work creating a memory book containing photos and newspaper clippings and capturing moments of her daughter’s brief fame.
“Everybody is giving her congratulations,” she said. “Her friends were pretty excited when she was on TV. We all recorded it.”
While it would be easy to blame the vehicle theft on being in a large centre, Nicole said what happened to her daughter could have taken place anywhere.
“You are going to find it anywhere whether it’s Calgary, Okotoks, Black Diamond or Turner Valley,” she said. “Like I said to other people, ‘Lock your doors no matter where you go.’”
