John Helinski is no stranger to living life on the streets. In fact, the 62-year-old man had been doing just that in a cardboard box in Tampa, Florida when the police found him.
They weren’t there to harass or arrest the man, however.
On the contrary, the cops were there to give him news that would change his life.
The officers had discovered a long-forgotten bank account that was registered in John’s name. What’s more, it had been accruing social security disability benefits for a number of years. All without John ever even knowing.
The amount accrued was so high that he could buy a new place to live.
Officer Daniel McDonald from Tampa Police Department first met John after he paid a visit to the DACCO Community Housing Solutions Center last December.
Together with Charles Inman of Drug Abuse and Comprehensive Coordinating Office Inc, the two men worked to help John recover all his personal identification documents to get him into some housing.
“As a homeless liaison officer, the bread and butter of my work often involves hopping department to department trying to help homeless people find the ID they need in order to get things like work and housing,” McDonald told ABC Action News.
Since John’s documents had been stolen while he was out on the streets, he would need something temporary for the time being.
“First, I drove him personally to the local tax collector’s office, where he was able to get a temporary State of Florida ID card,” McDonald explained.
John had received benefits from the program before, but he thought they had been long-canceled.
Daniel decided to do some footwork to make sure that was in fact the case.
“With his consular birth certificate and temporary ID, we went to the Social Security office, and I just walked up to them and said, ‘This man used to have benefits, can you help us?’” McDonald said.
Eventually, John, who used to live in Poland, was given access to his birth record- and that’s when he discovered that he’d been receiving benefits this whole time.
Having his temporary ID gives him access to his account, and soon a new place to live.
After all those years in a cardboard box, John will soon have a whole house of his own.
The undisclosed amount will cover rent and food costs without John having to work.
John’s case manager, Inman, couldn’t have been happier with the result.
“This situation looked really difficult, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to end up,” Inman told ABC News today. “If it failed, it meant we’d put a 62-year-old man on the street, and Officer McDonald and I were not OK with that.”
Officer Daniel hopes this story will encourage other homeless people to come forward and receive help.
“We’re uniformed cops with police cars, but we want homeless people to trust us,” he said. “Our job is not to arrest someone. It’s to help them. Homeless people are still accountable to the law, but they’re now starting to see we can be trusted, and this new model and field of policing is gaining popularity very quickly, I think.”
We can only hope John’s future looks up from here on out, and that Officer Daniel continues to help people living life on the streets. The world needs more people like him.
Learn more about John’s heartwarming story in the interview below!
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