After I hung up with the Longmont police dispatcher, I felt wrong for doing right.
Two children — one slouched in an umbrella stroller, the other a year or so older standing by — waited at a stop sign by a supermarket parking lot in Longmont.
At first, I just watched them through my windshield from several lot rows back as I organized my dry cleaning bundle. I watched the mother fly the sign and then the father under the shade of a single tree on that hot Saturday afternoon.
The sign read: “Need help! No food. No diapers. God bless.”
Everyone stopped for the sign. The red one.
No one stopped for them.
I did not stop either.
Instead, I watched some more and wondered about this family and what I could do.
I debated going into the supermarket to get cash to hand to them with love and with prayers from our family to theirs.
But that money would be spent that day, and the foursome would be back the next day needing more food, more diapers, more of what so many of us never go without.
Not a single toy or book cluttered this family’s area under the tree.
So, I picked up my cell phone and requested a police welfare check.
It was the right thing to do for the right reasons. And I stand by it.
No child need go without the basics, and the political will of this county and this country is to weave a strong net to catch those that fall on hard times — particularly little ones without the agency needed to change circumstances alone.
But days after I made the call, I better understand my sadness in the aftermath.
Both tough circumstances and poor choices have pressed so many of us against a wall where a police officer might assist or arrest.
Was I a snitch for calling the police on a family trying to survive anyway they could?
I do not know why they couldn’t or wouldn’t knock on the right door in our town to get back on track.
There is more than one door for help here.
If this family’s need was legitimate — a need for food and diapers, not dope or alcohol — the police could bring that family to that door.
If their need was not legitimate, the police could bring those children to a safer, more secure home — albeit temporarily.
So, I made the call and reluctantly took on the role of whistleblower.
“How many children and how old?” the dispatcher asked. “I’ll send an officer right away.”
Pam Mellskog can be reached at Mellskog@msn.com or 303-746-0942.
