BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — A Utah deputy swooped in to save the day after noticing something out of the ordinary in a window of a Box Elder County home.
Deputy Khalil Shah with the Box Elder County Sheriff's Office was sent on a routine assignment in January to check on an elderly woman who had not been heard from in a few days.
When Shah arrived at the residence, he noticed a sign taped to the window that said "HELP" written in large letters and took action.
"The address didn't quite line up to where the house was, so I drove past it then flipped around and as I saw it," said Shah. "I looked in the window of this house and all I see, it looked like an Amazon package, a paper Amazon package and in big red letters it said 'HELP.'"
Inside the home was Vicky Dean, a wheelchair-bound elderly woman who has cancer and recently had a heart attack. Because of a broken cellphone, she had no way to communicate with family and friends, so on the twelth day, she decided to make the sign.
"She was just beyond joyous to see that somebody had seen the sign," Shah said.
Dean was low on vital medication and food. Shah immediately took measures to help her, lending Dean his phone so she could dial the pharmacy and get her medicine.
"She was on blood thinners, cancer meds, all these different kinds of medication, and she was actually running out and she said that one of the medications she was on, if she had run out she would have a heart attack," explained Shah.
But the deputy didn't stop there; he picked up Dean's mail and went to the grocery store with a list to pick up essentials. Shah also picked up her prescriptions from the pharmacy before heading back with all of the life-saving supplies.
And then Shah went even further.
"There was at least two feet of snow on the ground all around, so she had a snow shovel that wasn't being used," he said, "so I made sure it got some use out of it and shoveled what I could from the doorway up to the path of my truck then I took her trash out."
Shah said when he heard Dean's story, he knew it was his call to do something greater than himself.
"If our Lord can feed the 5,000 off a few loaves of bread and some fish then I was in the position to do what I could," he humbly said.
Dean has received a new phone and is now in contact with a friend who is able to help her in times of need.
