A kind county cop in the middle of the night

I included this story in my Christmas column in The Baltimore Sun. I thought I would pull it out and post it here, so that it stands alone.

I met Shelley Grant (photo above) on Monday, as she arrived for lunch at Our Daily Bread in Baltimore. She told me a great story about an act of kindness, and I was inclined to believe the story until Ms. Grant added that the police officer involved “was A.I.” That threw me off, a quirky suggestion that the officer who had helped her get home was a creation of artificial intelligence.

But that just might have been Shelley Grant’s way of saying she was surprised by her good fortune. Maybe, acutely aware of the times we live in and the distinctly uncharitable nature of our cynical president-elect, she has come to expect little from her fellow Americans. It’s a common condition these days.

Still, here’s the story:

Driving back to Parkville from Johns Hopkins Hospital last Thursday night, Ms. Grant ran out of gas on Perring Parkway at McClean Boulevard, about three miles from her house. It was an hour or so after midnight, when the temperature was about 20.

Ms. Grant, who is 67 and an Army veteran, had no money. In fact, she said, after paying bills, including the cost of repairs to her home, she usually has little left from her fixed monthly income.

So she sat in her car and prayed. “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness,” she said, “and I called on Jehovah … and [soon] behind me was a police car, a police SUV.”

A 23-year-old Baltimore County officer, Brandon Urbas, approached her and offered to bring Ms. Grant enough gas to get to the nearest service station. And that’s what he did. “He came back with two gallons of gas and put it in my car,” she said. “Then he said, ‘We’re gonna start your car and take it over to this gas station on the right and fill it.”

And that’s what Officer Urbas did, with a tap of his credit card on the gas pump. “That brought tears to my eyes,” Ms. Grant said.

The young officer, who recently completed his third year on the county force, went beyond her expectations, a stranger (a real one, not an A.I. one) showing some genuine kindness on the way to Christmas.