LANCASTER, Calif. — A sheriff's deputy in California is being praised after he pushed an elderly woman in a wheelchair nearly a mile to her home.
Lancaster sheriff's deputies got a call about a traffic hazard earlier this week. They were told there was a wheelchair in the middle of the road, but when they arrived on the scene, they realized there was much more going on.
In the motorized chair was an elderly woman. The wheelchair had ran out of power and the woman was stranded.
The deputies offered her a ride, but the wheelchair was too heavy and too big to get into their patrol car. The woman said the chair was her only means of mobility, so she didn't want to leave it behind.
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So, instead of leaving both the woman and her wheelchair on the side of the road, one of the deputies got out of the patrol car and started walking. He pushed the woman all the way to her home, about a mile away.
His partner drove the patrol car behind the wheelchair as he teased the walking deputy, urging him over the car's external speaker: "You can pick it up, you're only going about 1 mile an hour."
Once she got back home, the woman thanked the deputy for going above the call of duty.