Athlone's phone-a-friend hero Marlyn is hailed

A local woman who works for Eircom's 11811 service and overheard an armed robbery taking place when a woman called the directory enquiry service has been hailed a hero after she acted quickly calling the gardai, who were on the scene within minutes. Auburn Heights resident Marlyn O'Rourke has been working for the 11811 service in Roslevin Lawns for the past ten years, but on Valentine's Day this year she received a call that she will never forget when she heard a woman and her staff being held up at gunpoint. "On Valentine's night I was working until 8 o'clock. At 7pm a call came through from a lady looking for a florist," explained Marlyn. " The next thing she dropped the phone but she didn't hang up and I could hear someone shouting 'Give me the f-ing money or I'll blow your head off' and 'Open the f-ing till'. This went on for a few minutes and I could hear the employees shouting. I checked the number and rang the Gardai in Clontarf. It turned out it was Clontarf Florists that was being robbed and the Gardai went straight out. "The lady, Bernie, came back on the phone and said they'd been robbed and I told her the guards were on the way." She said she was quite shaken by the incident and added: "I kept thinking please don't let the gun go off." When Marlyn went home that evening she told her husband Jimmy about what had happened and she couldn't get Bernie and the employees out of her mind. "I had taken her number down and I rang her when I got home and she didn't even remember that she'd been on the phone to me. I asked if everyone was alright and she said they were," explained Marlyn. A native of Clara, who has lived in Athlone for 34 years and in Auburn Heights for 14 years, Marlyn told the Westmeath Independent this week: "I've been working there for ten years and that was 'the call'." She has learned since from the flower shop proprietor, Bernie Walsh, that the gardai were on the scene in a couple of minutes and a Garda helicopter was overhead shortly after the incident. Marlyn thought about the incident for a short time after but had forgotten about it, when last week Joe Duffy, who is a customer of the Clontarf Florists shop, told the story on his radio show in a bid to track down Marlyn as Bernie wanted to thank her for her help. The Evening Herald then ran a story and on Thursday morning Bernie was interviewed on Ireland AM, but little did she know Marlyn had been contacted in the meantime and the two had the opportunity to speak on the show, with Marlyn doing the interview on the show over the phone. The two women also spoke privately on the phone over the weekend.