Bank Shuts Vault but Forgets to Withdraw a Depositor

An 87-year-old woman who was locked in a bank vault overnight by mistake was found safe in the safe.

Doris Willis was inspecting her safe deposit box Wednesday when a bank employee shut the vault for the day. She was left in the dark for about 15 hours.

“The lights went out and there I sat and I said, ‘Is the bank closed?’ ” Willis said. She said she “groped around” but couldn’t find a way out, and it was too dark to use a touch-tone phone in the safe.

“I prayed for the Lord to give me strength to find the opening or a button that I should press,” she said.

Frantic friends and family members reported her missing. She also set off a silent alarm, but officers who responded left without checking the vault.

“This morning we opened the vault at 9 o’clock, and when we opened it we looked inside and we had a customer that was sitting on the chair and she was the first one to greet us,” Washington Mutual Bank spokesman Gordon Hunt said Thursday.

His reaction? “Stunned would be an understatement.”

Tired and thirsty but otherwise unfazed, Willis said she’ll keep her account at the bank, which said it plans to do something nice for her.