On a weekend school trip to Six Flags on October 19, Elise Fenn-Smith ’27 had her bag and phone stolen. They were later recovered by park security and Dana Hall chaperones, with the assistance of Elise’s mother.
Elise and Yudi Wang ‘25 went on the Superman roller coaster together. Before going on the ride, Elise and Yudi‘s plan was to place their belongings inside the lockers just before they got on the ride. However, Yudi wondered, “You have to rent one of the lockers and, well, it costs money so is there any other option?” Yudi “saw other people placing their bags on top of the lockers,” and both students assumed that “If everyone else is doing it then it must be okay.” To take extra precautions, Elise “ wrapped [her] bag in [her] sweatshirt so it wouldn’t be visible.”
After the ride, Elise and Yudi returned to the locker room, where, according to Elise, “The Six Flags employees […] took down all of the bags from the safe spot and they put them on the floor.” Yudi elaborated that it “was a whole mess of bags, clothes, spilled water bottles, sodas and it was gross.”
Yudi was able to locate her belongings easily, but Elise couldn’t: “I obviously panicked at the beginning because it’s a very scary situation wondering how your parents might feel when you lose valuables […] and also how you, yourself feel after putting it in not the smartest place.” At first, Yudi didn’t think it was theft: “Initially I kind of dismissed it because if they stole [Elise’s bag and phone] why wouldn’t they take mine?” After searching with no success, they contacted a chaperone after realizing that Elise’s bag and phone had gone missing and there’s been a robbery.
Upper School Visual Arts teacher Kassie Teng “received a phone call from [Yudi] saying that [Elise] had lost their bag.” She met Elise and Yudi at the park’s Lost and Found, but there were no items turned in. In the Lost and Found, Ms. Teng witnessed “a woman and her two or three children with her and she was crying hysterically” because “her bag was also stolen.” Clearly, Elise’s wasn’t the only robbery that day.
Elise had her mother’s phone number memorized, so used Yudi’s cellphone to call her mother to ask her to locate the missing phone with the Find My iPhone app. Elise’s mother sent a screenshot from the app to Ms. Teng. Yudi waited for a security guard in the Lost and Found while Ms. Teng and Elise tracked down the phone.
Ms. Teng and Elise were joined in their search by another chaperone, Emma Johnson, Upper School Librarian. Ms. Johnson reported, “Ms. Teng was keeping” her “informed of what was happening with the student” through “chaperone group text so we could keep tabs on [all of the students‘ safety] so we’re sort of spread out in the park.”
At the same time, Yudi got an inside scoop from the Six Flags receptionist: “It’s really hard to get a security guard because they are not allowed to leave their posts because they have to talk to their supervisor, and their supervisor has to talk to someone else, and then they had to get confirmation that they can leave.”
As they were looking, Yudi arrived with a security guard 40 minutes later. The security guard believed, based on the screenshot of Find my iPhone that Elise’s phone was inside of a trash can near the smoking area. As they were looking through the garbage bins surrounding the smoking area, Ms. Johnson recovered Elise’s phone and her bag from a trash can. Ms. Teng saw “two or three other phones in there and four other bags in there.” Elise had a similar observation of “four other bags with two coin purses and three credit cards.” Ms. Teng overheard the security guard saying “There’s a code 6 or a code 5,” meaning that there had been a series of thefts in the Superman locker room.
None of the Dana Hall people involved in the thieves were apprehended. The Find My iPhone app proved its usefulness in emergency situations like these. This experience hasn’t shaken up the chaperones’ or students’ outlooks on Six Flags itself, as they would all still return.
Photo source: the Superman ride at Six Flags New England.