Being pulled over by a police officer isn’t exactly the best way to start your day. Now, add to that a cancer patient that you need to rush to the hospital for a doctor’s appointment, and it gets ten times worse.
Speeding is one of the reasons your car can be pulled over any given time, and the natural consequence of that is a ticket you are bound to receive. But not in this case. This deputy decided to put “the spirit of the law” over the “letter of the law” as he said, showing the compassion he felt the speeding driver and her passenger needed at that time.
A few years ago, RaeAnn Kuykendall of Idaho found out her mom had cancer, and this changed her whole life as well as her family’s.
One day in spring 2016, she managed to make an appointment with the oncologist, while it seemed he had to squeeze them in his schedule due to lack of time.
“So I made an appointment this morning for my mum at her Cancer doctor. They could fit her in but I had to hustle to get there. Okay no problem…..” RaeAnn wrote that day in a Facebook post.
That’s why RaeAnn had to rush with her mom, Diane, to the hospital and make sure they wouldn’t miss their appointment that could mean so much for her mom’s life. So, instead of 35mph, they drove at 45, which was exceeding the posted speed limit. And that’s when they were asked to pull over by an officer that was on patrol in the area.
Deputy Matthew Brakeman happened to be on patrol that day and, seeing the car going faster than it should, he had to ask them to pull over. Indeed, RaeAnn stopped the car, while one could tell that she wasn’t very happy about it.
“Driver was not very happy to be stopped,” Brakeman told USA Today. “So I spoke to her for a moment.”
The man asked the driver where they were headed and, when she replied they were going to the oncologist, Brakeman knew a speeding ticket was not what they needed at that moment.
As the officer told reporters, he had lost his own mother to cancer a few years back, so he knew exactly how the woman was feeling.
So, the officer went back to the patrol car for a while, and when he returned he went straight to the passenger’s side. He looked at Diane and asked if he could pray for her. Of course, she was more than happy to accept a prayer, so they did pray together.
“(I) walked back up to the passenger’s side and asked her mother if she would accept a prayer,” Brakeman said, “and she said ‘Absolutely’, and so we prayed and (I) told them to have a good day and went back to my car.”
While after that the officer didn’t have any further contact with the family, RaeAnn didn’t want his deed to go unnoticed.
So, she posted on the Kootenai County Sherriff’s Office Facebook page about her special encounter with the officer, thanking him for being so kind to her and her mom.
“Needless to say I emotionally lost it but thankful for him pulling me over at that moment and offering his kindness to us,” she wrote. “I don’t know the officer’s name that stopped me but I want to thank him for his blessings and for hope.”
Sadly, her mom passed away later that year, but we are sure that RaeAnn will never forget this act of kindness coming from a complete stranger.
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