An elderly veteran with physical illness decided to walk 100 miles to a doctor’s appointment, but the Alabama deputies came to offer help.
A Gulf War veteran Gerald Baldwin was seen walking down a road with an oxygen tank, deputies from multiple jurisdictions noticed him and came to help him.
Baldwin told a Walker County Sheriff’s Office that he was trying to walk and ride to an important doctor’s appointment 100 miles away.
“[It was an] appointment he was told he could not miss,” the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office explained in a post on Facebook. “With no way to get there, he said he started walking.”
“The deputy then transported him to the Morgan County Line where a Morgan County Sheriff Deputy took over and met a Madison County Sheriff Office Deputy in Huntsville who finished the trip and took the man to his appointment,”
“After an overnight stay, we were happy to do it all again today,” the post continued, “… to help get the man back home.”
The post has received thousands of likes and comments. The viral post reached to Baldwin’s son, Lance Baldwin also and he recognized the disabled father whom he has not seen for years.
“In an unforeseen turn of events,” the department said in an update, “the man’s son saw the post and recognized the disabled vet as his father who he had not seen or talked to in several years. Hopefully, they can reconnect!”
“I couldn’t bring myself to message him. It’s just a lot of bad blood between us,” he told the station. “But I knew his health was declining and he had cancer surgery the last time we spoke. I should’ve been there more.”
“I’ve read that post a dozen times over and over again,” Lance continued. “I still can’t believe they went as far as they did to get him where he needed to be, and then to do it again in reverse to take him back home… I’m not a religious person, but somebody was up there watching.”
The father and son reconnected, WLS-TV reported.
“It was really good to hear from him … I want to make amends for things in the past that stopped us from communicating,” Lance told the news station.
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