“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”~ Saint Augustine
So here’s a story for you about a lot of things. Charity being one of them.
In Florida, Jessica Robles realized that she had no food in the house to feed herself or her small children. Her boyfriend just lost his job, and due to some kind of error, she had been receiving food assistance but had lost it because of the glitch.
What does Jessica do in her time of absolute desperation? She went to the local grocery store and filled her grocery cart with about $300 of groceries and attempted to simply walk out without paying for it.
But she did not get away with it. Seasoned Miami-Dade police officer Vicki Thomas busted Jessica for shoplifting.
And this is where the tale turns into an unusual twist. Instead of taking Jessica to jail, Vicki went inside the grocery store and with HER OWN MONEY, purchased $100 worth of groceries.
When Vicki asked Jessica why she had committed the crime, the answer unsettled Vicki to her core: “My children are hungry.”
Apparently, Jessica did not have any history of habitual shoplifting. Instead of going to jail and allowing the children to go on being hungry, she was given a misdemeanor and told to show up in court. And then received the $100 in groceries. The officer making Jessica promise that once she was able to get back on her feet that she give the same kind of help to someone else that she received.
And that’s where the bulk of the story splits off into differently wild directions. None of which I can track and verify to be the truth. But everything up to this point, is the truth.
Speculation suggests that when the news of this heart-warming story of charity by the law officer was spread around, that people donated to help out Jessica. And from that general donation, she received an additional $700 in groceries. Another story claims that she was picked up for an interview based on this wild crime story, and ended up landing a job in customer service.
As much as this story is loving and gives people the gooey inside feeling of warmth. I look at this situation and feel for Jessica. However, stealing/shoplifting would probably not be the direction that I would go in, in order to feed my children. But I do not know exactly her situation. Perhaps she did try other things to keep afloat and it fell apart or whatever.
And should the other stories be true about how the community came together to help her out and gave her so many groceries…. I hope that for her own sake and for the sake of her children, that she does the right thing and fights her way to get back on her feet, rather than hope that someone will bail her out again when all that goes away. However, as I stated, I do not know if the uber-generosity story is true or not.
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21012009392020/cop-helps-admitted-shoplifter-with-groceries/
http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2013/10/22/miami_dade_officer_b.html
Dambreaker 