Telemarketers save a life

[timechange]

Freezing mountaineer saved by telemarketer
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) --A hiker is stranded in South America's Andes mountains when a blizzard begins. He reaches into his backpack for his cell phone -- only to find his prepaid minutes are up.

The Colombian mountaineer slowly begins freezing to death, surviving for 24 hours with his only warmth coming from carefully measured dozes of brandy. Then suddenly, at above 12,500 feet, Leonardo Diaz hears a familiar ring.

Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time.

"We called him to remind him that his cell phone was out of minutes. He said it was the work of an angel, because he was lost in the (Andes)," said Maria del Pilar Basto, the Bell South operator who called Leonardo.

Basto called for help, and she and other operators kept ringing Leonardo to keep him awake and help ward off hypothermia. He was able to keep talking to her until rescue teams arrived seven hours later -- with the frigid temperatures acting as a natural recharger for his cell phone batteries.

"I remembered that when I was a boy I put batteries in the freezer," Diaz said in a newspaper interview describing his late May adventure. "So, I took off (the dead) battery and flung it into the snow. After half an hour, it was working again."

Diaz was not answering his cell phone on Thursday.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/americ...eut/index.html

[clio]

ROTFLMAO

prepaid phones are silly LOL
even if they're prepaid, 911 SHOULD work regardless

[timechange]

Yeah but the guy was in Colombia

[eAjB]

LOL, good story.

[tribby]

Wow.

[Zacrifice]

Doesn't 911 work with prepaid even if you aint got any money one them in america?

Here in australia every phone (And i mean every phone) can call 000 regardless if they have money on there phone or not.. AND ontop of that if you cant get your own network (Like phone companys network) you can use ANY available network!

[tribby]

Originally posted by Zacrifice
Doesn't 911 work with prepaid even if you aint got any money one them in america?

I don't think so... otherwise people would buy the phones without minutes and just use them as emergency-only phones. But I don't know. My phone isn't prepaid

[Nothlit]

Actually, yes they do. By law, cell phones are required to dial 911 even when they have no minutes on them (and if they do have minutes, the 911 call does not subtract any minutes). Lots of those "donate your old phones" programs just disberse the phones to senior citizens and other such groups for free 911 access.