Lost Chinese girl uses ATM to reunite with her granddad

An 8-year-old girl from Quzhou, Zhejiang, received widespread praise on social media for her ingenuity after becoming separated from her grandfather on the way home on July 30.

Instead of asking a stranger for help, the child located a nearby ATM booth, where she pressed on its red emergency button to be connected to the bank’s monitoring center. She reached Zhou Dongying, a staff member from the Quzhou Rural Commercial Bank, who alerted the police and kept the girl calm until officers arrived and reunited her with her grandfather. In China, many local ATMs are equipped with two types of emergency buttons: an “emergency call” button for contacting the bank and a red “emergency alarm” button for alerting the police. This incident highlights the effective use of ATM emergency buttons, a method previously used in similar situations.