Or maybe just call a locksmith? It’s not like they need to do a tactical breach with battering rams and explosives and whatnot.
Right. I’m guessing the fire department is a cheaper option than calling a locksmith and paying after-hours rates. I’m not sure about the legality and safety of involving a civilian. Maybe someone else can speak to that.
As for why the friends/family didn’t try to call her workplace - the only person among my family and non-coworker friends who might know my work number is my husband and he’s the only one who actually knows where my office is ( although probably not the address) . My kids know the numbers to both my work and personal cell phones- but everyone else just has my home and cell phone number.
The part I don’t get is that someone called the police because they couldn’t reach her for 12 hours. I mean, maybe she was at work and just to busy to chat or was having a medical procedure done that she didn’t want to broadcast to her whole friend network.
I’ll take the exact opposite tack - I’m shocked that anyone thought there was a possibility that she wasn’t OK after a mere 12 hours of not responding to texts, and I’m annoyed on her behalf that the cops broke down her door on such incredibly flimsy pretense.
I wasn’t doubting you. A friend is an ex-cop and sometimes he refers ‘door-kicking’.
I’ve never seen either done, I never want to either. There are some videos on Youtube that try to scare people into buying door reinforcements… but the truth is that you can’t live your life being ruled by fear. ( I will say the fear is evidently a very profitable advertising technique. ) I’ve read news stories where restraining orders and such might involve an emergency locksmith visit. In the end, who pays the bill is anyone’s guess to me. Of my entire post, the one thing I was really curious about was if there actually are companies that do emergency construction repair work. Are there such companies…? Assuming a door gets smashed down by anyone or anything ( cops / robbers / malicious trees ).
A great many years ago I called my parents one night and got no answer. I thought this was really odd because they were elderly and not exactly night-time party-goers. I kept trying and when there was no answer well after midnight, I freaked out and called the Montreal police to check on them.
They were fine, and the irony of it was that the greatest hazard was posed by me, because the first thing the officer said when my Mom answered the door was “do you have a son who lives in Ontario?” which caused her to nearly faint because she thought something horrible had happened to me.
This was long before the era of cell phones, and I was always grateful that the Montreal police department got back to me within minutes to say that my parents were just fine, and there was a Bell landline outage in the area. They must have communicated to dispatch and had them call me right away. Everyone was relieved except I suspect my mother, who almost never drank, probably had a couple of shots of brandy that night. 
We had an incident a few years ago where a well-known staff member at a school right near ours was found dead of a heart attack in his house after failing to turn up for a meeting. When he didn’t appear, his colleagues called his wife at her work, and when she couldn’t get through to him, they called the police. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a happy ending. There was also a widely publicized case a couple of years ago in the neighboring district where a teacher didn’t show up for work and the school called the police–it became quickly apparent that there had been foul play, and they found her corpse in a field a week later where her boyfriend had shot her and hidden the body.
Those memories still looms large for a lot of people, and I know on the few occasions at our school when someone has failed to turn up and hasn’t left word, they start down the emergency contact list very quickly. I’m obsessive about emailing a bunch of people when I’m out so I don’t wake up to the police at my door, because I know it would happen. Heck, I was AT work a few weeks ago after having been out for several days previously with the flu, and a message didn’t get through to a coworker that I was going to be late for a meeting due to being double-booked, and she freaked out and sent three other people to search the building for me out of fear that I was still sick and had collapsed in my office or something.
On the one hand, it’s a little bit nannyish, but on the other hand, as a single person living alone, it’s reassuring to know that if something DOES happen to me and I’m not where I’m expected to be, action will be taken quickly.
I understand that people didn’t know how to contact her at her work, but still, the assumption should have been that that’s where she likely was, being that it was a workday and all.
This was all because she didn’t answer her cell phone? No one’s ever had a dead battery or lost their phone for a day???
It’s one thing to be grateful the police erred on the side of caution, but this is really nuts. She wasn’t in any risk group, and she was expected to be at work until the end of the shift, and who doesn’t ever stop for groceries on the way home??
“Her friends” reported her missing. But not good enough friends that they know where she works? Something doesn’t click into place there.
“My friend doesn’t answer her phone.”
“Have you tried calling her at work?”
'“No idea where she works.”
Doesn’t sound like an emergency, to me.
The OP said
If she’s been MISSING since 6:30 a.m. that doesn’t meant her friends didn’t know her work phone number, or they didn’t try to reach her at work; it means she’s been missing, as in nobody knows where the heck she’s been. “Her friends couldn’t reach her before or after work, so they over-reacted and so did the police” seems highly unlikely to me.
I live alone and I am fully confident that, should I kick off suddenly or become abruptly deathly ill or injured, nobody would notice until the landlord came looking for the rent.
So if that happens near the end of the month, I might be found in time. But early in the month, just after I paid the rent, it could take several weeks.
Two cases:
I was talking to my grandmother for close to an hour. Her niece, whose mother (my grandmother’s sister) had recently died, starting getting worried when my grandmother’s phone was busy for so long. The niece drove over to check on my grandmother. Who was still on the phone. The niece was worried, but quite happy there wasn’t a problem.
18 months ago a former coworker didin’t show up to work at his place of work. His current coworkers contacted his wife, from whom he is separated, and she was also not able to reach him. The police broke down his door. He had committed suicide. 
If the police were not able to check if she had been at work, they should not have broken down the door. Unless there were other circumstances. Because the people at work normally know if you should be at work.
When my parents were borderline-elderly, also in the pre-universal cell phone era, neither my sister nor I could reach them, and were concerned, so I called our brother, who lived several hours away. His wife answered and said, “They’re right here. Wanna talk to them?” and I was quite relieved. They had made a spur of the moment trip to see them and didn’t tell us ahead of time.
As for the police’s quick response, I also think there may have been something else going on that the OP doesn’t know about.
After the fact, it does seem weird that they would force open the door if they weren’t able to confirm that she was missing from work, and she was simply not available through her phone.
When the police arrived, it was my unspoken assumption that someone expected her to be somewhere, she didn’t show up, and couldn’t be contacted. Her story contradicted that and I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Now I’m wondering if there’s a backstory here I’m never going to learn about…
It could be as simple as a well-meaning friend with untreated anxiety. Such people often get into a worry spiral, and from inside the spiral their fears look perfectly reasonable.
And honestly, t’were it me I’d rather they be wrong by checking than by not, even if that meant coming home to splintered wood - which I highly doubt it did. Firemen have to splinter doors because seconds matter; cops can take a few minutes to get through cleanly. A woman alone is always a target, and will be reminded of that fact by cat-calls and wolf-whistles several times a week. I lived alone for over thirty years, and I often wondered whether help would come in time if I got sick on a weekend. Once cell phones became a thing I made it a practice to keep mine always in my pocket from the moment I got up in the morning. And I would always invite a couple of ladies from work to my home at least once, so that somebody knew where I lived.
I don’t think it’s nannyish to check on someone who has broken routine uncharacteristically. That’s what society is meant to be - people looking out for each other.
This has changed for many people in the last 20 years. I used to know where all my friends worked; our jobs were a major part of who we were. But there’s been a big shift in me and the people I hang out with away from that focus on jobs.
I know the secrets of my friends, what they want out of life, what keeps them up at night. But for most of them, I don’t know details of their jobs. This guy does something in sales, that guy’s works for a shoe company, but I can’t remember if it’s Nike or Adidas now. Unless I met them through work, I don’t think I could reach a single friend at their job if I needed to.
It’s not, but that’s not what the OP described. It said that the police were there at 7 pm, that she was “missing” since 6:30 am and that she was walking back from the (NYC commuter) bus stop when she rang the bell. It didn’t describe her uncharacteristically not showing up at work , or someone in her household reporting that she was expected home from work at a certain time and hadn’t arrived hours later, or that she missed a pre-arranged daily check-in call , which usually involves people well past 33 who are out of the work force.
My guess is there’s more to the story than the OP was told. Maybe true, maybe not, but I can’t see the police showing up just because she didn’t answer the phone for 12 hours when there are so many other reasons for not answering.
Yeah, because police wellness checks never go wrong.
Sorry for the cut and paste. The system isn’t letting me reply with quote.
This is almost certainly the case. I did some research online, and police normally don’t do a welfare check just because a young, healthy person doesn’t show up for work and/or a dinner date. From what I’ve read, police usually do welfare checks for urgent situations, such as
• the person is at high risk for suicide, as in the person sent a suicidal text or recently attempted suicide and can’t be contacted
• the person has a health condition such as diabetes or a heart condition and can’t be contacted
• the person is elderly and can’t be contacted
• the caller’s child is at a residence and the residents can’t be contacted
Your neighbor probably falls into one of the first two categories.
For those who hate the idea of the police coming to your home to do a welfare check, tell your friends and families you don’t want them to every ask for one, even if you’re dying on the floor.
Once the police showed up at our door and said that they were doing a wellness check on one of the women who lived in the shared-wall home next door. They wanted to know if it was the neighbors’ habit to leave the house with the windows wide open. We had never heard of a “wellness check” before. The police knocked on their door, peered in through open windows and called, and finally left without seeing anyone.
As time went on, we figured out what was up. The adult daughter of the house was in the habit of overdosing, and one of her friends probably hadn’t heard from her for awhile and called the police. With good reason - the paramedics were called to that house about half a dozen times over the course of the next few years and hauled the daughter off to the hospital.