The phrase SOS started out as a maritime signal, often sent out by morse code, to indicate
distress.
Officially, it doesn’t stand for anything, though it’s commonly thought of as an abbreviation
for Save Our Souls.
Now it’s become more of a catchall term for all help messages, and SOS messages have
been used to save lives and even help solve crimes.
Number 5
Wearable devices like Apple Watches can seem like a waste of money for some, but for others
they have proven to be literal lifesaving.
Every day things like monitoring health vitals can be useful for generally helping to lead
a better life style, but there have been a number of occasions when the device’s SOS
features have actually saved lives.
For example, in 2019, two kayakers were rescued after their kayaks sank off the coast of Puerto
Rico.
One used the Emergency SOS feature to contact local emergency services and share their location
with coast guards.
In December 2020, an Apple Watch led to the rescue of a woman in the US, though this time
the rescue was from something much more sinister.
The woman in question remains unnamed.
She was taken from outside her apartment complex in San Antonio while her daughter watched
helplessly from inside.
The victim was arguing with a man named Adalberto Logoria while inside the flatbed truck she
was driving.
Longoria was drunk at the time, and wouldn’t get out of the truck.
He demanded she get her things from the back of the truck and go.
Eventually, the victim agreed, seeing as she didn’t have much of a choice, and climbed
into the bed of the truck to retrieve her things.
Logoria immediately moved into the driver’s seat and pulled away from the apartment complex.
The victim screamed, but her daughter was unable to see which direction they had gone
in.
Logoria tormented the victim as he sped away, suddenly applying the breaks to make her fall
onto the floor of the bed multiple times.
During the ordeal, the victim was able to use her smart watch to contact her daughter
and police.
The watch sent the victim’s emergency contacts regular updates that gave her location, and
allowed the police to find her without any trouble.
Thankfully, Logoria was scared off by the thought of police before he could do any serious
harm to the victim.
He had stopped at a hotel parking lot and, when the victim told him she had contacted
police, he simply threw money at her, told her to put it on his books, and hopped a fence
to escape before police could arrive.
He was apprehended a few weeks later and charged with aggravated kidnapping.
Sources: https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/selma-police-ping-apple-watch-to-find-kidnapped-woman https://www.hebergementwebs.com/connected-objects/when-the-apple-watch-helps-find-the-victim-of-a-kidnapping
https://9to5mac.com/2019/12/04/us-coast-guard-apple-watch-sos/ https://foxsanantonio.com/news/local/selma-police-ping-apple-watch-to-find-kidnapped-woman
Number 4
The story of a domestic violence victim contacting authorities under the guise of ordering a
pizza has become well known and repeated on social media and various TV shows.
But it’s not the only time people have used pizza as a way to get SOS messages out to
the outside world.
It helps that pizza and fast-food deliveries will generally need an address to deliver
your food, so giving out a location for authorities to report to isn’t too suspicious, but it’s
a different situation when trying to send a message when ordering a pizza to be picked
up in store.
However, that was the only way the wife of 22-year-old Roberto Dominquez had of getting
a message out when she was held against her will by her husband in 2019.
The couple lived in New Mexico, near the border with Texas, when Dominquez’s violent behaviour
hit a new extreme.
He wouldn’t let his wife leave the house without him, would be violent towards her,
and even tied her up inside their house.
It’s not known how long Dominquez had been holding his wife captive when, in July 2019,
he decided they would get Domino’s Pizza.
He called a store across the state boarder and ordered a pizza for pick up.
Possibly because he didn’t want to leave his wife alone, he made her come with him
when he went to pick up the pizza and, for some reason, she was allowed to go in store
to get it.
The woman didn’t have much time, but was able to write a note to give to the cashier.
As she paid for the pizza, she slipped him the note, which told him she was being held
against her will.
Both Dominquez and his wife were both gone by the time the cashier looked at the note
and realised something was very wrong.
Thankfully, he took the note seriously and contacted police, who arrived at around midnight.
Officers also took the note seriously, and were able to track Dominquez down to a house
in Chamberino, New Mexico.
Working with local authorities there, they arrived at the house just an hour later, finding
the victim tied up and gagged on the floor.
It also appeared she had suffered more abuse in the few hours it had been since she had
managed to get the SOS message to the pizza store worker.
The woman was thankful to be rescued, and her husband was charged with domestic assault
and kidnapping.
Sources: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7282119/Woman-slips-note-Dominos-pizza-employee-alleging-kidnapped-beaten-husband.html https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/kidnapping-victim-alerts-dominos-pizza-employee-while-picking-up-order
https://eu.elpasotimes.com/story/news/crime/2019/07/23/dominos-pizza-note-leads-rescue-kidnapped-woman-anthony-texas-police/1808212001/ Number 3
Most SOS messages aren’t the stereotypical letters written in the dirt or with stones
in some secluded area, but sometimes this is exactly what’s needed to help locate
someone in distress.
Deborah Pilgrim was a 55-year-old woman from Australia who disappeared while camping in
2019.
She and a group of friends were camping on the outskirts of Sedan, a rural town in South
Australia.
Early one morning she decided to go for a walk but never came back.
Her friends and family couldn’t explain why she would have wondered off.
It was an incredibly hostile environment and Deborah didn’t leave prepared for a long
walk in those conditions.
As hours turned to days, her friends feared the worst.
Deborah had pre-existing health conditions, which meant even if the environment hadn’t
been deadly, she would have been in danger.
Added to that was the extreme heat and venomous snakes, rescuers were extremely concerned
for her safety.
Meanwhile, Deborah had had no intention of anything more than a short walk when she left
the campsite that morning.
After about two hours, though, she realised she had become disoriented at some point and
had no idea where she was or how to get back to her friends.
She climbed a windmill at one point to try to get a bearing of her location, but she
couldn’t even locate a road.
The area is extremely sparsely populated and any houses or shacks Deborah did come across
were empty.
At one point she drank dirty water, and spent hours lying under a tree with a burning fever
but she knew she had to go on.
Even if the chances of finding someone out here was very slim, Deborah didn’t give
up hope that someone would come to check on their properties here.
She left messages on abandoned cars and at houses, and kept looking for security cameras
or sirens or some other way to contact civilisation, as well as food and clean water to keep her
going.
After a few days, she finally found what she was looking for, a shack with a CCTV camera
outside, as well as a water tank she could drink from.
Deborah wrote the letters “SOS” in the dirt in front of the camera, just hoping someone
would see the message and the camera wasn’t broken.
She waited at the shack, grateful for the clean water and eating from a can of tomatoes
she had found.
The shack was owned by a former police detective.
He didn’t really pay it much attention usually, but he had heard about the search for Deborah,
so decided to check the cameras once a day.
The day after Deborah had left the message, he noticed the letters and alerted authorities.
Thankfully, Deborah hadn’t moved from the location before the owner could send rescue
workers.
She was found three days after she disappeared, in relatively good health against the odds,
and was reunited with her family.
Sources: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-17/deborah-pilgrim-shares-how-she-survived-in-the-bush/11611310#:~:text=During%20the%20three%20gruelling%20days,on%20a%20tin%20of%20soup.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/missing-person-deborah-pilgrim-sedan-search-enters-day-three/476d720f-ba94-453a-b0c2-0d8fda500284 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-50064573
Number 2
It was only thanks to quick thinking and preparedness that Tara Stephens was able to stop her soon
to be ex-boyfriend from taking her life when he attacked her in September 2020.
Jason Fluck was already a convicted criminal, involved in a gang in Wolverhampton, UK.
When he was 20-years-old, he had fired an illegal weapon at rival gang members, and
was sentenced to seven years behind bars for the crime.
It wasn’t his first offence against the rival gang either.
At the time, the judge said the scene resembled something from a film, but it was all too
real.
Five years after being released, it seemed Fluck hadn’t left his life of violence and
crime behind.
After he was released, he began dating Tara, who lived in Cardiff at the time.
However, it didn’t appear to be an easy relationship, and Tara kept her emergency
contacts up to date to be prepared if the worst happened.
In September last year, the two went on a day trip to Liverpool.
Tara had driven from Cardiff to her boyfriend’s house, and Fluck had driven them both to Liverpool.
While on a walk in the city, Tara somehow discovered Fluck was in a long-term relationship
with another woman and tried to break up with him.
Fluck immediately became violent and attacked Tara, who would later recall that at one point
she stopped breathing.
It didn’t seem like Fluck would stop until he had actually taken her life.
She managed to send an SOS message to her friend, and Fluck finally stopped, but it
wasn’t the end of the ordeal and Tara seemed to know this.
She told her friend if she didn’t make it back to Cardiff that day to call the police,
apparently expecting something bad to happen.
Thankfully, Fluck allowed Tara to return home and he went on the run.
He was never very far from his now ex-girlfriend, though.
Over the next few months, he stalked Tara, breaking into her home to take back items
he had given her during their relationship, causing thousands of pounds worth of damages
to her car and harassing her to the point Tara was scared for her life.
He sent hundreds of abusive text messages with the intention of making Tara’s life
unbearable.
Finally, police were able to catch up with Fluck and he was arrested.
After being caught, Fluck pleaded guilty to stalking, burglary and assault, and was sentenced
to two years imprisonment.
Sources: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/cheating-lover-jason-fluck-32-19979125 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/jason-fluck-wolverhampton-court-jailed-19977362
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Seven+years+for+man+who+fired+at+rival+gang.-a0196372386
Number1
More than 6000 migrant workers were rescued from kilns where they were being held against
their will after one brave 19-year-old girl managed to get an SOS message out to the outside
world.
Bonded labour is the most common form of slavery.
People take out a loan, which is repaid through free labour, usually in gruelling conditions.
As the people cannot leave, their living expenses are added to their debt, which often makes
the debt impossible to pay off.
Manasi Khamari was a 19-year-old girl from Balangir, India, when she, her father, and
her sister were forced into bonded labour when they had to take out a loan to pay for
her mother’s medical bills.
Her family and about 350 more workers were sent to a brick kiln, where they would work
from 4.30am to late in the evening.
They had very few facilities and with wages as low as 250 Rupee a week, it would have
taken them several months to pay off the initial debt even without the additional expenses.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in India, the government ordered the kilns
to be shut down.
However, the kiln owner wasn’t happy to just let his workers go.
The workers were told they could leave, but only if they met a certain target within a
week.
The labourers worked for more than 14 hours a day in the middle of the outbreak to try
to meet the target.
Many achieved the goal, as they wanted to go back to their families, but it wouldn’t
be enough for the kiln owner.
He refused to let them go home and tried to force them to continue working.
When the workers protested and tried to leave anyway, the people in charge became violent,
and many of the workers were attacked.
Some had serious head injuries, but nobody was allowed to go to seek medical attention.
During the chaos, Manasi managed to hide.
She still had her phone, and used it to send photos of what was happening to every one
of her contacts.
The photos were leaked onto social media, and charity organisations were able to figure
out their location.
The local authorities were contacted, and 30 brick kilns, including the one where Manasi
worked, were raided.
Thousands of workers who had been trafficked from across north east India were freed and
allowed to return to their families.
The owner was identified as a repeat offender who had already been found guilty of bonded
labour three times in the past.
He fled the scene, though a number of the thugs he had hired to attack his workers
were arrested.