Look Before You Lock: Mother Shares Tragic Story As Temperatures Rise In Phoenix

Press release from the City of Phoenix:

May 27, 2020

On a 100 degree day in Phoenix, AZ, the inside of a car get up to 119 degrees within 10 minutes. Give it 30 minutes, and the inside of that car is up to 134 degrees. These are conditions that, just last year, took the lives of 53 children. Dawn Peabody is the mother of a child lost to heatstroke.

"She was funny, loving," Dawn reminisced about her daughter Maya. "There was no stranger to Maya. She'd run up to people and hug them all the time in restaurants. I was constantly having to remind her no, you stay with us. But, she didn't meet a stranger. "

At just two years old, Maya loved life. But that life was cut short when she tragically died from a heatstroke after being left in the back of a car.

"If I can prevent one parent, one family, one child going through the pain my husband and I have gone through, it's worth reopening that scar," Dawn said.

In October of 2008, Dawn Peabody's in-laws were visiting Phoenix. After a family breakfast, Dawn went on to work. She normally took Maya with her. But because family was in town, Maya went with her husband. The family got home and, out of their usual routine, forgot that Maya was in the car. By the time they got back to her, it was too late.

"People think that this is usually abuse or neglect," Dawn explained. "And this is not. A majority of these accidents are what I call misremembers. People thought they dropped their child off in day care or change in routine."

Heatstroke is a leading cause of non-crash related fatalities for children. And it's not just kids. Pets are at risk, too. Dawn offers simple tips to ensure this does not happen to you.

"Look before you lock," Dawn explained. "Just open that backseat every time. Another recommendation I give is to take a stuffed animal that has become now a tool, not a toy. So when the child is not in the vehicle, the stuffed animal goes in the back seat. But when the child is in the vehicle, the stuffed animal goes up front with you. So you have that extra visual reminder. Another one I recommend, too, is taking your left shoe and putting it in the backseat with baby. You're not going to go far in Arizona without a left shoe on."

If you come across a car with a child or pet that appears to be in distress, Arizona State Law allows citizens — after calling police — to break the window of the vehicle. Dawn and others also are working with law makers to make it mandatory that every vehicle has a sensor in the back of cars.

"Right now my vehicle will tell me I'm low on gas," Dawn said. "It turns off my air bag if I have the wrong weight in the front seat. It will tell me if my windshield wiper fluid is low. My car will tell me not only that my tires are low, but which tire. But if I accidentally leave my child in the back seat, all it does is act as an oven. It does nothing to prevent that child's death."Learn more at KidsandCars.org.

This press release was produced by the City of Phoenix. The views expressed here are the author’s own.