A single mother and her two sons returned to their apartment in Riverside, California, on Christmas Eve to discover that it had been burglarized and that all of their gifts were stolen from under their tree.
But some officers of the Riverside Police Department ensured that the family still had gifts on Christmas Day.
Body camera footage released by the department shows that at roughly 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning, officers arrived at the residence with toys and an envelope with $700 donated by police department personnel.
“We told all of our dispatchers and officers about what happened to you. And so we all came up with some money for you. So this is from a lot of us. It’s $700 cash. Hopefully, it'll help out,” one officer can be heard saying in the video as the mother burst into tears and hugged him.
“Thank you,” she said. “You guys are awesome. Thank you. You guys have a Merry Christmas.”
One officer responded, “Hopefully, that’ll take some of the burden off.”
According to the police department’s Facebook page, the Riverside Fire Department got wind of what happened and brought over even more gifts a few hours later.
“We couldn’t be more proud of our officers and dispatchers here at the Riverside Police Department, along with our Riverside Fire Department,” the police department said in a statement. “And we promise our detectives will do everything they can to identify and find this criminal Scrooge who tried to ruin Christmas in Riverside.”
