A more serious time was when someone's mother called the fraternity because there had been a sudden death in the family. The mother called, even though her daughter had already graduated and had her own place nearby, because it was a weekend night and her daughter wasn't home and she had no idea how to reach her and she thought we might be able to help. All of us who were home got together and pooled information. We knew she had gone to a movie and that the movie might be letting out and we knew where she lived. Several groups went out looking or camped out at strategic locations, and we did find her, so she wasn't alone when she got the news. Although I think that this situation wouldn't happen now-a-days, because your family would just call you on your cell phone, I'm not sure that's a good thing. The need to mobilize friends to track you down is obsolete, but the advent of personal phones means that your family won't ever chat with your housemates when they answer the phone in your absence, and that people don't need to take down phone messages for each other, or share the use of a single phone line. Inconvenience is now obsolete, but something useful has also been lost.