Robyn Cogger was rendered almost speechless shortly after she arrived last Thursday at the Fort Frances OPP detachment, where she was being honoured for something she hadn’t thought twice about–saving an eight-year-old boy from a potentially life-threatening situation.
“I think I was about to cry,” Cogger exclaimed shortly after being handed the framed letter of commendation by Sgt. Larry Indian.
The incident Cogger, 15, was commended for took place shortly after 5 p.m. on Dec. 5. She and a friend were waiting to cross the railroad tracks here in town when they spotted a young boy on a westbound CN train.
Cogger immediately went to a nearby residence and called her mother, Holly, who in turn contacted the OPP Communications Centre in Kenora.
Remarkably, that call coincided with another one made to the Fort Frances OPP where the mother of the young boy, Dalton Boshkaykin, reported him missing.
The CN dispatch was contacted and the train stopped. The conductor found Boshkaykin on one of the rail cars, where he apparently had been playing without knowing the train was about to head off for Winnipeg.
The boy was picked up by police and returned to his mother that evening.
“A train travelling at that speed [50 mph] and in that weather [minus-five C], if he didn’t freeze first, he may have fell off into a snowbank and we may still looking for him now,” remarked Sgt. Indian.
“It was a very worthwhile call.”
Touched by the occasion, Cogger said it was an honour to receive the letter, adding it was “kind of funky.”
When asked if she thought she was doing anything out of the ordinary when she reported seeing a young boy on the train, Cogger’s aunt, Mary Lou Parks, jokingly interjected, “No, I’ll bet she thought she was just tattling.”