A Single Word Saved This Girl From Being Kidnapped

Whenever there's a headline about a kid narrowly escaping a kidnapping, it's hard to glean any meaningful takeaways aside from a sigh of relief and a "thank goodness." Often, it's pure luck that allows for those terrifying events to have a happy ending. That wasn't quite the case for how a 10-year-old girl in Arizona smartly escaped an abduction attempt. This girl used a simple trick that any family can replicate starting today.

According to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, the girl was walking with a friend near a park around 4 p.m. when a man driving a white SUV pulled up next to them.

The man reportedly told the girl that her brothers were in a serious accident and that she needed to go with him. The girl then asked the man what the "code word" was, but the man did not know and drove off.

"Kudos to the parents of this child for having a code word and talking to their children about stranger danger," Sheriff Mark Lamb said in a statement. "We hope by putting this out, it will encourage parents to have that conversation and create a plan with their children, so they know what to do if they are in that situation."

Brenda James, the girl's mother, told reporters that she'd recently read about the importance of having a family code word.

"We actually just came up with that few months ago, she said. "This one time, it saved my daughter's life."