Illinois Supermarket Clerk Saves Baby In Runaway Cart

Before this job, I spent around three years working at the Pineway supermarket in my hometown of Oregon, Illinois. I've been trying to recall if I did anything even borderline heroic during my tenure as a stockboy.

Nope. Can't think of a single thing. Maybe catching one of our elderly customers when she slipped on the ice and fell one winter's afternoon puts me in the ballpark, but not really. I was once the first stockboy to grab a mop and bucket when we had a major case of breakage in the pickle aisle, but you don't get called heroic for smelling like dill pickle juice for the rest of your shift.

Heroic is the word being used to describe a guy named Ben Mazur, who works as a courtesy clerk for the Schnuck's supermarket in Alton, Illinois, about 300 miles southwest of Rockford.

Ben was on the job on St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, when something caught his eye and alerted him that there was a problem.

WGN-TV News:

“I seen this large shopping cart rolling down the parking lot,” said Mazur.

The cart and child were headed straight for a stop sign, so he sprinted down the parking lot and caught it.

“I stopped what I was doing and saved the baby,” he said. The child was uninjured.

The scenario began when the child's mom was was dealing with her other children, trying to get them buckled up in the car, when the cart began rolling away on the parking lot's slanted surface. The cart was rolling fast, but luckily for everyone involved, Ben was moving faster.

This is not the first story to show how a supermarket clerk, cashier, or stockboy/stockgirl have made a positive impact on a customer: