Several e-mailers were taken with the 911 audio I played on WLS/Chicago this morning. It’s a 6-year-old boy who woke up at 1:30am and went looking for his mother. When he couldn’t find her anywhere in the house, he called the cops.

As you listen to this, note how well the 911 operator handles this situation. She’s no doubt hardened by years of middle-of-the-night calls of crimes in progress, domestic violence, automobile accidents, etc. But she uses just the right tone with this little boy, who is living a child’s nightmare, and gets a patrol car over there to see what’s going on. When they arrived, they found the boy with the phone in one hand and his blanket in the other, with his little sister at his side, crying.

It turned out that the mother, Rene Hester, had gone to a convenience store to fill her gas tank. Why she had to do that at 1:30am, or what else she was up to before returning a half-hour later, is still under investigation. However, there were no other adults in the house, there’s no father around, and Rene is only 23 years old — meaning she had her son at 17 and her daughter at 19. Not a prescription for parental success.

Listen.