Telemarketer’s call a blessing for woman who fell

BY JOANIE MORRIS
SALISBURY POST

Every year, the Rowan County Rescue Squad sells portraits for its primary fund-raising campaign.

“This fund-raiser is absolutely vital to the Rescue Squad’s continued operation,” said Coyt Karriker, squad chief.

Wednesday night, it proved vital to 80-year-old Sarah McClamrock.

Community Support Services, a telemarketing company, calls county residents to ask if they would like to participate in the portrait drive.

“Last night was the first night that Community Support Services had started calling for the 2002 project,”Karriker said this morning.

They called McClamrock, who lives at 4345 Woodleaf Road. The telemarketer told her what she was doing, and McClamrock couldn’t have been happier.

“She told the solicitation company that she had fallen and she’s in a lot of pain and that she thinks she has broken her hip,” Karriker said. “The solicitation company took all this information and called me at home. ... It sounded like a real, substantiated call.”

So, Karriker called 911, which dispatched a county ambulance to her home.

“Sure enough, she had fallen and broken her left leg,” Karriker said.

During the dispatch of the ambulance, Roger McDaniel, chief of the Scotch-Irish Volunteer Fire Department, was listening to his scanner. He knew the address and notified the county ambulance that he had a key to the home. He regularly goes over and helps McClamrock.

“She’s a nice old lady,” McDaniel said. She is having surgery Friday to correct her broken femur.

McDaniel said McClamrock had fallen and couldn’t get up to dial the phone. When the solicitation company called, she was able to answer the phone by pulling the receiver down.

“She couldn’t reach the phone to dial it, but she could answer it,”he added.

She had just fallen when the telemarketer called her home.

He said the telemarketer’s call enabled McClamrock to get help faster. If not, she would have been found by a family member checking on her, McDaniel added.

“That just made it much faster,”he said.

Karriker agrees.

“Thank goodness they did that,” he said. “She could have been on that floor another day or so before somebody checked on her...I’m just glad this company was in a position to assist her at the time that she actually needed the assistance.”

Contact reporter Joanie Morris at 704-797-4264 or jmorris@salisburypost.com .