| A few years ago, my wife left the garage door open | | | | kitchen and climbed into a cabinet that she had left |
| by accident when she came home one night. We all | | | | open. Our son got into the cleaner, and swallowed a |
| went to bed thinking the doors were safely locked and | | | | good bit of it before she saw him. |
| everything was normal. Around 3:00 that morning, our | | | | Our babysitter may not have known to close the |
| alarm went off. We woke up immediately and ran | | | | cabinets, but she did know to push the alert button on |
| downstairs to see what was going on. Some of the | | | | our security keypad. Instead of having to call 911 and |
| neighbors came out of their houses, and one of them | | | | maybe be put on hold, she got immediate contact with |
| said they saw a man running away through the | | | | a security specialist at the 24/7 monitoring center, and |
| woods. Thankfully, all the man had done was a little | | | | told them she needed an ambulance. Help was sent |
| damage to the door to our house inside our garage. It | | | | right away, and even called our cell phones to let my |
| gets better: the police were able to nab the robber on | | | | wife and I know there was a problem. We raced to |
| the other side of the woods behind our neighborhood. | | | | the hospital in time to hear the doctor tell us that our |
| If it hadn't been for our home security system, who | | | | son would be fine. Phew! We were lucky our |
| knows what would have been taken from us, or how | | | | babysitter knew what to do -- and lucky we had a |
| we might have been harmed? | | | | home security system. |
| Then last year, my wife and I went out to dinner for | | | | Everyone has family stories like these, though they |
| our anniversary -- French food, a nice wine, the whole | | | | don't always end happily. I can't imagine where we'd be |
| thing. While we were gone, the babysitter decided to | | | | if we hadn't had our security system installed. We're |
| experiment a little with her own cooking skills. Little did | | | | thankful, and that's why we'll always let home alarm |
| she know that while she was rummaging through the | | | | systems watch out for us. |
| cabinets, our 2-year-old son had followed her into the | | | | |