Last weekend, the Malenfant family was on their way from New York to Portland, Maine by way of Boston, after 19-year-old Kori spent a week and a half in the Big Apple undergoing brain surgery. Because of rail delays, the family missed their connection at Boston’s North Station by just five minutes, and it would be several hours before the next train arrived.
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With temperatures in the single digits throughout the northeast, the Malenfants were looking for somewhere to store their luggage and get Kori, who was operated on just four days earlier, out of the cold, when they happened upon some police officers, who proved that goodness is alive and well in the world.
“We were just setting up to do the Boston Garden detail for the Bruins game,” Boston Police Captain Kelley McCormick told KCVB-TV. “They looked tired. [Kori] looked cold and frail.”
As it turns out, McCormick is intimately familiar with just how physically and emotionally exhausting the post-op process can be. His wife is a kidney transplant recipient — for which he was the donor — and he spoke of the “highs and lows” of recovery. Worried about the toll the extra hours and freezing temps could take on Kori’s condition, the police captain decided to take matters into his own hands.
He loaded the family into his cruiser, telling them they could stay with him as he went to get gas. But after the pitstop, he just kept driving.
“We got to about Lynnfield and [Kori] goes, ‘Are you driving us to Portland,'” McCormick recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, this is a kidnapping but it’s legal.'”
As WCVB-TV reported, McCormick had them home to Maine in about two hours, and he managed to make it back to Beantown before the end of the Bruins game.
“There were just no words at that point,” Kori told WCVB-TV of the officer’s kindness. “We were so thankful.”
“It’s just like we got a break from all the worry we had been experiencing,” her mother added. “We just needed to get our daughter closer to home, but it was so much more than we could have imagined.”
(H/T: WCVB-TV)