The Missouri State Highway Patrol phone number for its office in Springfield is not listed correctly in several places. It's a safety issue for all of us, and a headache for people at a business here.

Lisa Landers normally mixes up the sweetest of scents. But she recently noticed something had gone sour. People constantly called her business, The Art of Soap & Glowing Scents, but they didn't want to talk to her.

Landers says she's had people call up crying, saying they've tried three times to reach the Highway Patrol. It started with the release of the new AT&T phone book.

The patrol's number is listed wrong in the government pages. On top of that, half the time that someone calls 411 for the Highway Patrol, he or she is sent to Landers' business instead.

It's not just the phone book. It's not just 411. If you go online and look for it, it's listed wrong by yellowpages.com, an AT&T Web site.

The problem is so bad that Landers doesn't even answer her own phone. Instead, this is what you hear from her answering machine: "If you're looking for the Highway Patrol, call 895-6868." [Landers' business number is (417) 859-6868.]

It's a headache big enough that there's no scent strong enough to soothe it. But Landers isn't worried about that. She just hopes the confusion doesn't lead to real problems.

She worries about people needing help and getting delayed in reaching the right number.

A reporter spoke to five different people (each one told him he needed to be transferred to a different department) at AT&T before one agreed to try to fix the problem. And, on Thursday morning at least, yellowpages.com provided a correct number for Troop D.

Meantime, the Highway Patrol is concerned about this issue too. It's also contacting phone companies to make sure each lists the correct number.

The advice for people needing assistance in an emergency is to not call 411 but to dial 911 instead.