Students and Alumna Create Happy Ending for Lost Child

The actions of two University of Hartford students and a UHart alumna helped reunite a 6-year-old boy with his parents and kept him from harm after he wandered off in the middle of the night, according to Public Safety officials.

Erica Lee '13 and Rachel Cutler '13, who both graduated on Sunday with BFAs from the Hartford Art School, and Jocelyn Rosenberg, a 2012 graduate of the Hartford Art School, were in a taxi headed to campus at about 1:40 a.m. on Wednesday, May 15, when they spotted the little boy walking by himself on Albany Avenue, near The Village for Families and Children, clad only in pajamas.

The three women asked the taxi driver to stop so that they could pick up the child. They then instructed the driver to take them, and the little boy, to Public Safety headquarters on campus.

At the time that Lee, Cutler, and Rosenberg picked up the boy, the temperature was just 39 degrees. The child was cold and frightened, and was on an extremely busy part of Albany Avenue, according to Public Safety. Public Safety tried to make the child comfortable, gathered information, notified Hartford Police, and called an ambulance so that the child’s medical condition could be evaluated.

Meanwhile, after dropping the three women and the 6-year-old boy at Public Safety, the taxi driver spotted a man walking near campus, and asked him what he was looking for. The man said that he was looking for his son, and the driver told him that he had just dropped off a young boy at Public Safety.

The boy’s father then went to Public Safety and was reunited with his son. According to the father, the child had wandered out of the family’s apartment on Mark Twain Drive.

“Ms. Cutler, Lee and Rosenberg did an outstanding job in picking up and safeguarding this child,” said Public Safety Lieutenant Christopher Lyons. “This is an example of outstanding and compassionate actions taken by two students and an alumna of the University of Hartford, in which they went out of their way to provide safety to a lost child. They made him safe and their actions led to him being reunited with his mother and father.”