Today a customer asked me to tell her the weirdest service call I’ve ever had. There are a lot of candidates, but this is the one that sprung to mind:

It was a hot August afternoon and a woman in southern Bellevue called me from her neighbor’s phone, saying she was locked out of her condo. I took down her address, quoted her a price and an ETA, and fired up my van.

When I arrived at the apartment complex I quickly located the right building and unit but did not find a stranded customer. I walked around for a few minutes and didn’t see her anywhere. Then I called the neighbor whose phone she had used to contact me in the first place. The neighbor came right out and recounted her interaction with the woman. She said, “Yeah, it was weird. She was limping and her arms were all scraped up. And she had two little dogs with her. I’ve never seen her before. I have no idea where she went.” I thanked her, did a sweeping scan of the complex one last time, and walked back to my van to get on with my day.

I was just pulling out of the parking lot when I saw an older woman sitting under a Japanese maple tree with a couple of dogs. I parked the van again and approached her. She gave me a look of happy recognition the moment she saw me. Up close, I could see that the dogs were a dachshund and a Chihuahua. She looked generally disheveled and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. And, like the neighbor said, her arms and legs had been bleeding. She looked kind of like a vagrant.

We introduced ourselves and she escorted me to her door. It was not the address she had given me over the phone, which I pointed out to her. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I misspoke.”  I was suspicious. As is routine, I asked her for ID. She lifted her hands, palms to the sky, and told me it was inside. That’s not unusual. People don’t always make sure they have ID on them before they accidentally lock themselves out. But I was already a little dubious about the whole thing and wondering if I should just wish her well and move on. Instead I squinted at her like David Carradine playing the role of a Chinese monk in that old TV show, and thought to pepper her with one last round of questions. She broke pretty easily.

“Why did you get your own address wrong?”

“Well, it’s not really my place,” she said, as if she were confiding in me.

“What?! Then I can’t let you in!” I said, exasperated.

Immediately she realized her error. “Ohhh, nooo! You’ve gotta let me in! Pleeeeease let me in!” she begged.

“I can’t let you in to a property that’s not yours.”

“It’s my daughter’s place. I’m here dogsitting.”

“Where is she? Can we call her?”

“I don’t think so. She’s in Tahiti. And I don’t know her number. It’s in my phone, and my phone is inside.”

This was all plausible, but it didn’t explain why she looked like she’d just rolled out of a dumpster and then gotten into a fight with a bunch of alley cats, which then stole her shoes. I asked her what happened and she told me the story.

“Well, I went out on the balcony with the dogs and I didn’t realize that the sliding door would lock behind me when I shut it. It was really hot up there. It’s right in the sun and the floor was like a griddle. It was burning my feet. I was really afraid the dogs were going to overheat and die. I tried to use the propane tank from the grill to break the glass door but I couldn’t swing it hard enough. I was really scared for the dogs. I was calling for help but nobody came. Finally I dropped the dogs one by one into the bush below. Then I jumped into the bush too. That’s why I’m all cut up. My shoes are inside. Normally I have shoes.”

“Show me this balcony,” I said.

We went around to the back of the building, the dogs scampering along behind her, and she pointed up at a second-story balcony. Underneath it was a large hedge that looked like it had been split in half. I was convinced.

“Is your purse inside the unit?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have an ID in there?”

“Of course.”

“The first thing we’ll do when we get in is go to your purse and grab your ID.”

“Sure! Fine! No problem!”

I got the door open with little effort and the dogs bounded up the stairs inside the unit. My customer followed them up, limping the whole way. As if there was any remaining doubt, she got to the top of the stairs and pointed to her purse. Next to it was a tumbler filled to the middle with red wine. She pulled out her wallet, showed me her ID, and paid me.

“I hope your daughter appreciates you,” I told her before heading down the stairs and back to my van to get to the next job.