Is your ICE list accessible?
Is your ICE list accessible?
In an emergency, how could medical officials help you?
Writer’s note: This post was originally published on Medium’s “We Need to Talk” on January 8, 2022.
Imagine you walked outside and fell on ice right outside of your home. Your significant other is either nonexistent or out of town. Your kids are at school, all grown and live out of town, or you’re childless. A passerby wants to get in contact with your family. However, you’re one of those people in the neighborhood who minds your business and doesn’t talk much, so asking neighbors how to contact your loved ones won’t work.
That ice fall has left you out like a light, so the passerby called for an ambulance or police in the meantime. If law enforcement or medical professionals walked in your door right now to find out who your emergency contacts are, would it be easy to identify? If they looked at your smartphone, would it be easy to figure out who to reach?
I hadn’t thought much about this until I lost my smartphone a few years ago. It fell near a train platform, and someone picked it up. My screen was locked, and the image on my screen was some kind of fancy wallpaper or a Bitmoji. But I live and breathe emails, so it didn’t take long for a new one to pop up on the locked screen. The stranger saw one of my email addresses pop up from a recipient and typed that email address into his own phone to tell me he’d found my phone.
Although my career consistently requires me to either send or answer emails, I wasn’t someone who spent countless hours talking on the phone or playing with mobile apps. Pre-COVID-19, I was more likely to read a physical book on public transportation than to aimlessly browse social media or be connected to my phone. (After social isolation, I became a binge listener of podcasts every single time I walk out of my door, primarily “This American Life” or “Red Table Talk.”) At that time though, I didn’t even realize my phone was missing until I got that email on my laptop. I checked my pockets and purse, and exhaled knowing my phone had been found by an honest person.
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This was the second time I lucked out with an honest stranger. The first time was when I left my purse on another train. I was easy to find because once again, I had something inside (I forget what) with an email address on it. This time my phone was in my pocket. The person sent me an email that popped up while I frantically searched for my purse after getting into my car, trying to decide whether I wanted to take my chances and drive without a license. (I chose not to and called my older brother.)