Editorial: Happy ending to sad tale | Wairarapa Opinion | Local Voices from Wairarapa, New Zealand

Yesterday's story about the mother who drove home from holiday and forgot her kids has been a hot topic.

The mum got out of the car in Masterton to make a toilet stop, and got back in and drove away not realising her kids had also got out.

She drove home - to Porirua, nearly 100km away - before realising they weren't there.

Thankfully, the kids had been scooped up by two girls, who were quite young to be out alone that late themselves, and taken to the police station.

Given that it had a happy ending, it's easy to make light of the "Honey, I forgot the kids" situation.

But it must have been a horrible moment for the mother to get home and realise there weren't kids asleep in the back of the dark car as she'd presumed.

And for the two kids, aged just 10 and 6, it must have been quite terrifying to realise they were alone at night in a strange town.

But it is difficult to understand how it could have happened. How could you fail to notice that where there were previously two sleeping children, there are now two empty seats?

In the nearly 100km drive between Masterton and Porirua, wouldn't you glance back once or twice?

We don't know the identify of the mum in question, and I imagine that she's quite happy to stay anonymous, so we'll probably never know.

But the good thing about this story is that two young children left alone in a Masterton park at night came to no harm. The heroes of this story are the girls who took them to the police station where they were well looked after, and it's good to be able to acknowledge them in today's paper.