Quite a nice story coming on the heels of all the treachery we’ve heard our vets being put through lately!
Over Memorial day weekend officers Eric Cooper and Milo Shields from the San Diego Police Dept pushed 67-year-old disabled veteran Gilbert LaRocque 2 miles home after his scooter broke down.
“We thought it was going to be like pushing a shopping cart, but we were fighting against the transmission the whole time,” said Cooper. “We would have done it for anyone, but we definitely wanted to get that guy home.”
“To help a veteran, I don’t care if we have to push him 6 miles. That’s what we do. This is not about a police officer helping a San Diego citizen, this is about an American helping a veteran,” stated Shields.
t was the ultimate show of respect for a disabled Vietnam war veteran on Memorial Day weekend.
Going above the call of duty, two San Diego police officers pushed Gilbert Larocque nearly two miles home after his 300-pound motorized scooter broke down on a busy road.
For the 67-year-old whose legs were injured when he worked as a door gunner in the Army, the officers’ kindness is something he will never forget.
‘You wouldn’t expect them to do something like that … push you all the way home,’ Larocque told ABC 10 News.
‘I appreciate what they did. They went out of their way. How many people would stop?’
Officers Eric Cooper and Milo Shields spotted Larocque trying to flag down cars as they directed traffic on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard about 1.50pm Sunday.
When they couldn’t get the scooter started, they offered to push Larocque home in the hot sun.
Cooper, the son of a veteran, and Shields, a veteran, said they didn’t think twice about helping out the stranded local.
However the kindhearted cops didn’t anticipate how difficult pushing the 300 pound scooter would be.
‘We thought it was going to be like pushing a shopping cart, but we were fighting against the transmission the whole time,’ Cooper told UT San Diego.
Cooper told ABC 10 News: ‘Whenever we got to an intersection, we’d be in the middle of an intersection, pushing this guy and it would just lock up, so we’d have to drag this thing through the intersection.’
After they got Larocque home, the SDPD sergeant who filmed the officers’ kind gesture picked them up and returned them to their patrol car.
Larocque told Fox 5 San Diego he had only traveled three miles when his scooter died.
He was running errands for his 90-year-old father, a Pearl Harbor survivor, who he cares for.
He said he’s had trouble walking ever since he suffered burn injuries in Vietnam.
‘I was surprised that [the officers would] push me that far,’ Larocque told Fox 5 News.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” said LaRocque, who was injured in the war and relies on the scooter to be mobile. – See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/two-officers-caught-helping-vietnam-war-veteran-video#sthash.pJdvTGCn.dpuf“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” said LaRocque, who was injured in the war and relies on the scooter to be mobile. – See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/two-officers-caught-helping-vietnam-war-veteran-video#sthash.pJdvTGCn.dpuf
great citizens, and respectful to our vets.
right on needed to see this for sure thank you
That’s the way that they need to treat them, after all they are the reason that we have our freedom if you want to call it as such these days.
With all the negative stuff that we have been hearing about cops, its nice to hear some good ones.
There are still true police officers out there.
Real cops. Respect and service.
Need more cops like them
so they are not all dicks but didnt the san diego police department just claim they misplaced 2 million dollars ?
Hat’s off to you fellas…
Well Done!