North Shore Bank has a new customer, thanks to quick action on the part of two employees.
When a little girl took a spill off her scooter outside the branch early this summer, Shorewood teller Kevin Pereira rushed out to help. When he saw the cuts and scrapes on the girl’s arm, personal banker Laura DeBruin supplied some Band-Aids and antiseptic from the first-aid kit.
The girl and her grandma, who was with her, were not customers at the time. But earlier this month, they stopped back into the branch to open a Seymour Savings account.
“Grandma and the girl had talked about how kind Kevin and Laura were,” branch manager Shannon Weber said. “They agreed that a bank that reaches out and helps the way Kevin and Laura did is a bank this little girl wants to be with forever.”
“When asked how I could help them, they said, ‘Oh, we were impressed by how fast you guys responded to seeing something like that, and we thought it would be a good idea to bank somewhere that seems to genuinely care about people,'” Kevin said.
Laura added that she didn’t think she and Kevin had done anything extraordinary: “If you see someone fall and get hurt, you try to help. I would hope most people would have done the same if they saw a kid get hurt.”
In a fun and fitting twist, the little girl’s first name happens to be Karma.
“Laura and Kevin were in the right place at the right time,” Shannon said. “And it made a great impression.”