Target - Mountain View California

Hello, I was in Target today (Tue, Dec 4, 2012) in Mountain View California. A little girl named Hannah was screaming "Enrica!" at the top of her lungs over and over again, pacing and frantically looking for her adult, and crying. I approached her and asked her if she was lost. She was terrified and obviously didn’t know whether to trust me. She told me she was looking for her nanny Enrica. I told her, "Let’s go see if we can find her.”" but she was reluctant to walk with me because she was clearly trying to decide if I was a good stranger or a bad stranger (good for her!)

Instead of encouraging her to walk, I quickly surveyed all of the aisles I could and then I called out to a Target worker and asked him to come over. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of her because honestly, there were quite a few people around and I didn’t know if they could all be trusted to help rather than take advantage. I asked the Target worker if he could page her nanny because she was lost. We went together to the nearest courtesy phone, where we proceeded to give the information to the announcer to page her nanny. This whole time, she’s still shaking and crying and terrified. An elderly lady that was seeing all this kept saying, "Honey, you’re safe. We’re gonna find her.." because she was in such obvious emotional distress.

This whole event took approximately ten minutes. As we were paging the nanny, she appeared, without a care in the world, chatting with her shopping friend, smiling, clearly unaware that she had even lost her charge. And she was at least six aisles away from where Hannah was! Hannah ran to her and with a huge cry of relief hugged her legs. Enrica’s reaction? She rolled her eyes, and said, "You knew where I was. Stop crying.”" in an annoyed tone. No shock at the realization that Hannah had been lost. No concern or apologies or thank yous. Just an eye roll and scolding the girl. The elderly lady that had been with us was so fuming mad she wouldn’t leave. I started to walk away and then I came back. I said to the nanny, "Not even a thank you for the people that helped her while she was lost???" Nanny replied with, "She wasn’t lost.”"  I said, "If she wasn’t lost, how come she was screaming YOUR name at the top of her lungs and crying, and you didn’t hear her or see the crowd gathering around her??? How did we have time to look for you and page you? Just be grateful someone less trustworthy didn’t find her!"

She was clearly unaffected by my words so I walked away. But it’s killing me to think that this woman is getting paid to watch this child and has such a casual approach to her safety. Her mother needs to be informed! It is every mother’s worst nightmare to have a nanny like that. Please post this. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will forward it to Hannah’s mom. Thank you.
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