Stuck elevator one of Dori’s most traumatic life moments

Taken from Dori Monson’s show Wednesday after a major power outage in downtown Seattle led to 25 calls about people stranded in elevators.

A stuck elevator is one of the scariest moments of my life, even though it didn’t happen to me.

My wife and I took our three daughters to New York City. The girls were about 10, 6 and 5. It was a Saturday night, about 9:30. We’re walking down Broadway at 54^th Street and we’re passing a restaurant. My oldest daughter nudges me and says “Dad, there’s Katie Couric.” They had watched Katie on The Today Show every morning, and there she is, standing on the sidewalk talking to a friend. My kids love her.

My daughter approaches and asks, ‘We watch you every morning, can we have a picture with you?” Katie Couric couldn’t have been sweeter. She gets mom and dad involved and all five Monsons get a photo with Katie.

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Then, we head back to our hotel. It was a little bit of an older place. My middle daughter has a tiny bladder, just like me, and needed to use the bathroom. But there was a little deli outside the front door and I tell my wife I’m going to pop in and get a Diet Coke, and that I’d meet them up in the room.

I’m probably about three minutes behind them. But they’re not up in the room. I wait five or 10 more minutes and they’re still not back.

It’s 10 p.m. now.

I saw them going into the lobby, so I thought maybe they stopped at the gift shop. I walk around the lobby; I go out to the street and the deli is the only thing still open.

Still no sign of them.

Now I’m getting panicked. I go back up to the room. Nothing. Then I go back to the lobby and ask someone coming out of the public restrooms – “Have you seen a woman and three little girls?” Nope.

And now I’m getting hysterical. I’m so scared because I have no idea what’s happened to them.

I go back to the room and I don’t know what to do – call 911 in the middle of New York City when my family has only been missing for 30 minutes? I thought they’d been abducted. Maybe somebody grabbed them while walking by the hotel rooms. I’m thinking, “Do I start pounding on hotel room doors to see if someone snatched up my daughters?”

Finally, I hear the ding of an elevator from down the hall. One of my daughters is crying.

The elevator I’d taken was fine, but the one they took was stuck for 40 minutes. It was my wife, three daughters, and a German tourist. My family was trying to talk with the German man, but couldn’t communicate with him other than him seeing a little girl holding herself trying to keep herself from peeing on his feet.

My middle daughter still talks about the trauma of having to go so badly, but being stuck on an elevator for that long.

So yeah, a stuck elevator was one of the most traumatic moments of my life.

Taken from Dori Monson’s show Wednesday after a major power outage in downtown Seattle led to 25 calls about people stranded in elevators.