Delaware

Mom Hails Local Waitress a Hero After She Helps Reunite Runaway Girls with Parents

Often in life, if something doesn’t feel right, more often than not, that is the case.

For a waitress in Delaware, she trusted her instincts and her actions led to the reunion of two runaway teens with their families.

Lisa Stephenson was working at the Blue Crab Grill in Newark when two young girls walked into the business and filled out job applications late last month. The teens did not include a present address on the applications.

Stephenson, who is seven months pregnant, knew something was off.

“They looked really young … it just didn’t really make sense. I think one of them was wearing a high school sweatshirt,” Stephenson said.

“I’m pretty sure that they’re runaways,” Stephenson told a co-worker.

Stephenson’s intuitions were correct. The girls -- 14 and 16-years-old -- were runaways from Maine. They stole a car belonging to the younger girl’s mom and drove south.

After leaving work that day, Stephenson went home and did an internet search for both of the girl’s names. The search returned a missing poster that was posted by one of the girl’s mother.

Stephenson reached out to the mother on Facebook and received a message back.

“Are you serious? I can’t believe it,” the woman wrote back to Stephenson.

Stephenson then contacted the Newark Police Department and relayed the car make and model to them.

A day later, the teens were located at a strip mall in Maryland.

A short time later, the teens were reunited with their mothers.

Although Stephenson said she doesn't believe her actions were heroic, she is being hailed as a hero by the mothers of the teens.

"It was just so comforting to know that somebody cared and that somebody had seen them," one of the girls' mothers told NBC10's Tim Furlong. "That's what a hero is -- somebody who just goes on the feeling, that just says, 'Something doesn't feel right here and I'm not OK with just letting this go.' And she didn't. And because she didn't, we found the girls the next day."

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