Collin Breaux
The News Herald
LYNN HAVEN, Fla. — After seeing a family in need, Lynn Haven police officer Mikayla Edwards stepped in to help.
Edwards helped a mother two weeks ago after her car broke down and she didn’t have enough money to feed her family.
“I was responding to a Wal-Mart to back up one of our other officers. We cleared that call so when I was leaving, I was leaving through the Taco Bell parking lot to get back on (State) 77,” Edwards recalled. “I saw people standing in the drive-thru,” Edwards said. “So I pulled up and said, ‘Hey, is everything okay?’ It was a mother. She had an older vehicle. It broke down. She had three kids in it. One was a pre-teen and the other two were very small children.”
Two men helped Edwards push the vehicle into a parking spot. But when Edwards overheard that the mother only had money to buy enough food for one child, she stepped in and bought them all food and looked after the children when the mother went in to get drinks.
“The kids just sat in my car and played with my lights and sirens until she came back out,” Edwards said.
Edwards said she was motivated to help “because law enforcement gets such a bad rep these days. People think all we want to do is just put people in jail, which really isn’t the case. We really do want to get out and help people and better the community. She was having a hard time. I guess, probably just God, ‘Hey, you need to buy this family food. You need to help them, make their night better.’ I just listened and that’s what I did.”
Edwards and other officers have done things like that before but their actions have gone unnoticed, she said.
“It happens more than what people realize,” Edwards said.