Police Officer Notices 73-Year-Old Woman’s Lawn Is Overgrown, Then Mows Entire Yard
'Oftentimes police work is about giving back to our great community'
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A Rhode Island police officer could not ignore an elderly woman's overgrown yard while on his routine patrol, so instead of ignoring it, he decided to mow he entire lawn.
Officer Matthew Caradimos, who is with the Warwick Police Department, did a welfare check on the King Street neighborhood after noticing an unruly yard.
Caradimos, who was curious to find out why the grass had been left to grow so much, knocked on he doo, but no one answered.
In an attempt to find out more about the owner, he approached a neighbor.
Amanda Goodinson, who lives across the street, said was not sure where the homeowner was and hadn’t seen her lately.
Caradimos then approached another neighbor, who said the 73-year-old woman was finding it difficult to find a landscaper to cut the out-of-control grass.
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Caradimos did not leave it at, he had an idea.
He then caught hold of a man who came through the intersection and didn’t stop at the stop sign.
“I said, ‘Hey, really? I was right there,'” Caradimos recalled.
“He got a kick out of it and he apologized. And I said ‘I’ll tell you what. Do you have a lawnmower?’”
The driver returned with a mower, and Caradimos got to work.
"I just felt like if she needed some sort of assistance or help, then why not give her a hand?” he reasoned.
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Goodinson came out of her house and captured a video of the officer in uniform tending to the lawn.
“I thought it was really nice,” she said.
Caradimos did not realize he was being filmed.
He said: “I was focused on the grass, making sure the lines were straight.”
The homeowner, Ellie Kelly, was grateful to the officer for going above and beyond his call of duty.
“He just cut it,” Kelly said.
“I was like ‘Wow’. I started to cry.”
The kind gesture did not go unnoticed by Warwick Police Department, who tweeted:
“Oftentimes police work is about giving back to our great community.”
Often times police work is about giving back to our great community. Last week, one of officers noticed an overgrown lawn in his beat. After making sure the resident was ok and just in need of some assistance, he found a lawnmower to borrow and took care of the yard! pic.twitter.com/3qzlOLm87g
— Warwick Police (@warwickripd) May 28, 2021
Caradimos said he hopes that more people get the chance “to see the Warwick Police Dept. and other officers engaged in activities like that, helping citizens out, and not just dealing with the criminal aspect of this job.”
Meanwhile, another neighbor who heard of the elderly woman's struggle to find a landscaper referred her to a friend who agreed to cut her grass once every week.
