Adrian Young is only 4-foot-8; she’s not much bigger than many of the school children she helps cross the street. But she doesn’t let that get in the way or make her hesitate when a student needs help.
Young works at the Alexandria Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles, making sure children can cross the street and get to and from school safely. She keeps dangerous traffic at bay, but on one occasion she staved off a lot more than that.
Young was just finishing up a shift, but had a weird feeling. It nagged at her, and she ended up lingering around longer than she normally would have.
An 8-year-old girl turned toward Young, and screamed something at her. “Please help me Miss Crossing Guard!
“She’s not my mother!” the little girl said from the playground Young was approaching, right next to the intersection she guards. And then Young said she went into “mother mode.”
She didn’t hesitate to run over and grab the girl. “And I told her to hold on to me as tight as she can, do not let go, because both of us were very small, and the lady was bigger than me,” Young said.
As she held onto the little girl, the woman started attacking Young, so she tried to fend her off.
“I just thought about attacking her to make sure she can’t take this little girl,” she said.
The woman was then arrested, and Young prevented what would have been a kidnapping.
“I just did what I felt was right,” Young said. “I couldn’t see myself let that little girl be taken.”
Sharon Arellano, the girl’s mother, thanked Young with tears in her eyes.
“If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t know where my daughter would be right now,” Arellano said, completely grateful to Young for her heroic actions.
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