This may come as common sense to many of you, but it’s an important story and one I felt I had to share. I hope it encourages all of you to trust your gut reaction as a parent or guardian and do what’s right, even when it’s easier to do nothing.

This weekend my family and I took a trip to see our friends and their children, and we all decided to go to a local park. It was a great place, lots of games and rides, swingsets everywhere, the city did a tremendous job with the area. But something wasn’t quite right, and our good friend was the first to point it out.

Away from all of the distracting rides and attractions, a guy sat on a nearby hill with a very young girl. He was sat under a blanket with the girl, covering them both. And when I say covering, I mean covering. The little girl was completely covered by the blanket, and all we could see of him was his baseball cap. It wasn’t a cold day either, the weather was beautiful and we weren’t wearing coats or hats. It was a nice day.

Anyway, sometimes the blanket was very still as they laid next to each other. Other times, the blanket was moving and there was clearly something going on under there. But as most people do, the first thing I thought was that it was just a guy (albeit a young guy) with his daughter, and maybe she was cold or they just were playing.

But our friend just felt weird about the whole thing. And the more we watched, the more uncomfortable we all felt. It just didn’t look right. It didn’t seem like harmless fun, the girl wasn’t smiling or laughing when we could see her face, and he was acting in a way that made all of us, as parents, start to feel extremely scared for the girl.

After about half an hour, the girl came out from under the blank and just stood around for a while, not looking happy or sad. She just had a blank expression. Then she started to talk to other kids and began to play. The guy folded up the blanket and sat on it, watching the kids in the playground.

We didn’t know if he was an older brother or her parent or uncle, but what we did know was that our collective radar was going off. We all felt odd about it, and we also noticed other parents in the park staring in his direction, looking concerned. We waited until they were ready to leave, watched him take the girl to his car, and jotted down the license plate.

Later on, after a lot of talking and deliberation, our friend called the police and described what had happened. We were skeptical, and we were scared, too. What if we were wrong? What if we had just reported something that was completely innocent, even if it looked odd to us? Well, the police didn’t see it as anything other than doing the right thing. They told our friend that she was right to report it, and if we ever see anything suspicious, we should always trust our gut and tell someone.

The police followed up with a call from someone who specializes in child welfare cases, and they took the information, ran the guy’s plates and found an address. They are looking into his background and will make sure everything is OK with the little girl.

So, the advice from the police officer is something I want to reiterate. If you see something, say something. Trust your instincts and listen to that little voice that tells you something just isn’t right. It could make a huge difference.