PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A quick-thinking SEPTA police officer used social media to help a man who wandered away from home earlier this month.
SEPTA police officer Shana Albright and officer Joe McMorrow were on duty May 1 at the Olney Transportation Center when they noticed a man who appeared lost.
"He didn't know where he lived," Albright said. "You could tell he was lost. And didn't know where he was at and didn't know where he was going."
As McMorrow looked at the man's ID to try to help, Albright had an idea: "I went on Facebook and put his name in to see if he had a Facebook account. Surprisingly, he did."
She started messaging the man's friends.
"Within, like, 10 minutes, a guy inboxed me. It was his son," she said. She showed the man his son's image.
"I said, 'Hey, do you recognize this man?' It took him a minute to process, but he was like, 'Yeah!'"
The son contacted his sister, who was already nearby looking for their dad who has memory issues and had wandered off. "Thankfully, his sister was already in the area trying to find him because he had an AirTag on him," Albright said.
An AirTag is a device that can be tracked with bluetooth-enabled devices like cellphones.
Albright explained to the man that she and McMorrow were with his father and that they had his address from his ID — but she soon learned it was an outdated.
"His son said, 'Well, that's not his address anymore.' So thank God we didn't get him transferred to the house, because he hadn't lived there in years," she said.
The SEPTA board honored Albright on Thursday for her actions helping to reunite the man with his family. And it turns out the man she helped was a former SEPTA employee.
"The board and the public are incredibly proud of all of what you are doing for us, and how you helped this man in need who happened to be a former employee," SEPTA general manager Leslie Richards said.
Albright is taking all in stride.
"Broad and Olney is dangerous. So anything could have happened," she said. "I'm glad that we were there at the right time to be able to help him out."