Three girls and their youth sponsor entered an elevator at the Drury Inn and Suites an hour before midnight on Wednesday, ready for bed.

The elevator began moving but then stopped. That’s when the girls, Amanda Yoder, Adriana Santiago and Erica Grasse, decided to help it move.
“We were going to go bust some freshmen girls and guys because we thought they were in the same room,” said Santiago.

Yoder continued: “We got in the elevator, and the elevator wouldn’t let us go down.  We thought, ‘Let’s just jump for the fun of it…and then it shook terribly.’”

The elevator stopped again, stranding the three girls from Blooming Glen Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania and their youth sponsor, Andrea Bauman.

Steve Bauman, Andrea’s husband and a co-sponsor from the youth group, was playing cards and had just answered two phone calls from his wife about pizza delivery and a room number.  When the phone rang for the third time, he was annoyed.
‘“Is this important?’ I asked my wife,” said Steve Bauman, “and she goes, ‘We’re trapped in the elevator.’”

Bauman handed his deck of cards to someone else and went to the front desk to alert them of the incident. The clerk immediately called the fire department. The general manager at the Drury, Scott Bosak, said it is a company procedure to call the fire officials if an elevator stops working.

“This was the first one for this year,” he said.
About 40 minutes later, as the firefighters were opening the hatch on top of the elevator, the power went out.
“She was freaking out,” said Santiago, pointing to Yoder.  “I tried to stay calm, but then they told us it was only a 10-foot drop.”

Yoder remembers thinking: “I didn’t need to hear that.”

The firefighters lowered a ladder into the dark elevator, and one joined the stranded foursome. Then, one by one, they climbed through the hatch and out onto the landing.

Elevators, such as the four Otis ones inside the Drury, are programmed to stop if the control mechanism known as “the governor” is jostled.
“If it were to fall sideways,” said Bosac as he pointed to the foot-tall governor box on the floor of the mechanical room, “it assumes there is a problem and bars shoot out to hold the elevator in place.”
Sarah Sullenberger, a convention volunteer, didn’t hear about the stuck elevator until she stumbled upon a group of people in the hotel lobby while she was on the nightly curfew rounds in the youth hotels.  Sullenberger helped to keep curious onlookers away from the firefighters while they worked.
Bosak only had good things to say about the late night drama.  “You guys are the best group I’ve ever had — ever,” said Bosak.  “The girls even came up to me and apologized for jumping.  That never happens.”
For Yoder, this will be a Mennonite convention that she will always remember.  “It kind of stinks walking up seven flights of stairs,” she said, “but I don’t want to get in an elevator for a long time.”