Ask any hotel employee about what tends to go missing at their workplaces, and you will hear mostly about clothing, jewelry, and electronics such as cell phones. You might hear a heartwarming tale of a child reunited with a favorite blanket or beloved stuffed animal. (For months, a picture of a toddler clutching the teddy bear we’d mailed back to him and a nice thank you letter from his parents graced the housekeeping bulletin board.) If you’re lucky, you might hear some more unusual tales. I had the privilege of escorting a very friendly Dachshund I’d found wandering the hallway to the front desk and reuniting him with his family. I also had the more dubious privilege of having to help calm a couple of very ophidiophobic housekeepers down after they’d found someone’s abandoned pet python in one of the check-outs. (Quite honestly, I thought he was cute, as did one of the housemen, who I guess ended up adopting the snake.)

It was on a hot late summer afternoon when we recovered our most unusual find. A transformer blowout that left half the city in the dark also managed to create no small amount of chaos in the workplace. Fire doors swung shut, effectively putting the hotel under lockdown. A mob of housekeepers complained to yours truly, "We caaaan't clean any more rooms if our vacuums aren't working."

And the elevators shut down. Fortunately, one of the housekeepers stopped complaining long enough to gasp, "The elevators! Is anyone in them?"

She then dashed down the hallway, thumping on each elevator door, yelling, "Is anyone in there?"

Hot on her trail, I stopped cold when, from the shaft of the main elevator, we heard a small, uncertain, "Yeah."

"Stan!" I shouted into my walkie-talkie, probably startling the houseman who was most accustomed to seeing me in various stages of pleasant cheer. (And how could I not smile around him? He looks like comic book creator Stan Lee, hence his pseudonym, and talks like Jeff Foxworthy. If you can fathom this, True Believer, you might be a redneck geek.) "There's a KID trapped in the main elevator."

"What floor?"

"Hang on..."

"Valerie," interrupted another of the housekeepers, "what do you want us to do? We can't vacuum."

"Dust, make beds, and make an attempt at cleaning the bathrooms. You don't need electricity for that!" I barked at the housekeepers. "Honey," I said to the kid, "are you all right down there?"

"Yeah," said the kid, meaning the exact opposite.

"What's your name?"

"Madison."

"Madison, I'm Valerie. I'm up on the fourth floor. Can you tell me what floor you're on?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well, let's keep talking. Stan will get you out of there soon, in fact..." judging by what I knew about ceiling heights and how distant the girl’s voice sounded, the chilling realization hit me.

"Stan," I said into the walkie, "she's probably stuck between floors."

"Oh no!" whimpered the girl, now threatening to hyperventilate.

"Now don't worry, hon. You'll be all right, and," said I, parking my tush right by the elevator door, "I won't go anywhere until Stan gets you out. I also have the walkie-talkie, so if you need anything else, I'll take care of you. Want to know how this happened?"

"Yeah."

"The city had a power outage. I guess too many people were using their air conditioning."

I heard a nervous giggle, but still a giggle in response.

"But guess what. You won't have to wait for the power to come back. Hear that?" I added, amid the din of Stan prying the elevator doors open the next floor down and clanking around doing only God and firefighters know what in the elevator shaft.

"Yeah?"

"That's Stan."

And probably some rope, cable, grappling hooks, the Jaws of Life and so forth. Heaven knows he made enough noise. After about twenty minutes of trying to keep the girl calm amid the racket, I thought I heard, "That's it. Reach for me. Ah gotcha."

"You got her?" I squeaked down the shaft. "Stan, you got her?" I repeated into the walkie.

"Ah gotter, Val."

Phew.

I heard after the fact that cheering broke out in the lobby.

A few minutes later, the girl and her parents took the stairs to see the quick-thinking housekeeper who found her and me, and to thank us. An hour and a half later, the power came back, but the memory still stays with me. A few months later, a blustery October storm blew some lines down in the middle of our lunch break. I immediately dropped my soupspoon.

“Check the elevators!” I yelled as I bolted down the hallway.