A Burnaby firefighter’s Mandarin classes helped police reunite a 79-year-old woman with her family this Saturday.
A concerned citizen, thinking the woman might be lost or have dementia, brought her to Firehall 1, on Sperling Avenue by Canada Way in the evening, according to the fire department.
The pair were standing in front of the station when one of the fire engines returned from a call.
The woman didn’t speak English, so firefighters tried to communicate using Google translate after calling police.
After the RCMP arrived, their attempt to communicate with the woman didn’t get them much further, according to the fire department, so the department called Vaitua Haddou, a firefighter at another fire station.
Haddou had taken Mandarin lessons before joining the department because he thought it would be useful and because he thought it would help when he was applying for the job, fire Chief Joe Robertson told the NOW.
Haddou got enough information from the woman for the RCMP to track down her file, find her address and return her to her daughter’s house near Edmonds Street and Kingsway.
“A job well done by all concerned,” assistant fire Chief George Assaf wrote to Robertson in a report on the incident.
- Cornelia Naylor, Burnaby Now
