Officer Luis Tarraza was just starting his shift on Sunday morning when he got a call about a woman who refused to leave a hotel. It's a call he gets often, he said, and thought he knew what he was going to walk into.
When we got there, he found a woman who he estimated was in her 60’s. Tarraza was surprised to find that she wasn't belligerent, he said, but just looking for help.
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"We asked her what was going on and she said, 'The government said I was allowed to stay at a hotel for 30 days and they gave me 90 days of some kind of housing,' and she said, 'But they don’t have any information,'" Tarraza said.
But the woman told the veteran Chelsea police officer she didn’t have any money and she had nowhere to go
"I said, 'OK, I'm going to take care of your room tonight because I don’t want you out in the heat.' It was like 96 degrees outside," Tarraza said.
Without hesitating, he paid for the homeless woman’s room and gave her phone numbers to call the next day.
"She started crying and she almost made me cry," Tarraza said. "She was just thanking me, thanking us for allowing her to stay there."
A fellow officer shared his story on social media, accoridng to Tarraza, who said he was a little embarrassed when NBC10 Boston reached out for an interview.
"Because it’s something you do out of your heart I guess," Tarraza said. "You know, my mom’s the same age and I would hope someone would do the same thing for her if she was in that situation."
