Emergency! I'm 45 & Single! Help!

Times must be awfully hard in your love life when you have to resort to calling 911. The real emergency was Lorna Jeanne Dudash's need to get a certain policeman's number. Last month, a noise complaint by a neighbor prompted a sheriff's deputy to Dudash's home, inciting 'love at first sight'. Dudash called the emergency hotline, desperately seeking the cutie pie's name and his return. When he did, he arrested Dudash's heart, along with the rest of her, on charges of misuse of the emergency dispatch system.

In Lorna's call, she professed her attraction to him, and said how it might be fate that he stopped by. "Heck, it doesn't come very often a good-looking man comes to your doorstep." The dispatcher, unbelieving as to what she was asking, continued to press Dudash about what exactly her emergency was. She admitted the lack of a 'real' crisis. "Honey, I'm just going to be honest with you, OK? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45 years old and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to go about doing that without calling 911." She asked to have him sent back and to blame the urgency on her dog.

"I know this is absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you mind?" The dispatcher refused to divulge the officer's name but as luck would have it, Dudash got her wish. When the deputy came calling again, he swept her off her feet…and into a jail cell.

It may have been love at first sight, but hind-sight is 20-20. In response to the charges, Lorna admitted that she acted rashly. "I never really gave it any actual real thought. If I had, I wouldn't have done it." Although expecting a 'slap on the hand', she recognized the reasoning behind the charges. A police officer's time is valuable when dealing with true life or death situations. Dudash's harsh lesson in love has her facing up to a year in jail, and a $6,000 fine.