During my time on bike patrol, I gave Debbie about as many tickets as she had tattoos, which was a heckuva lot. And I wasn’t the only one killing forests to issue all the tickets she received. Debbie was about fifty years old, barely over five feet tall, white beneath all that ink, with strawberry hair. And drunk. Almost always drunk. A chronic downtown nuisance, she was inevitably irritating someone, usually trespassing somewhere. I often thought, if she’d saved all the money she spent over the decades on tattoos and booze, she might’ve bought a house by now. Instead, she was homeless.

One evening, I responded to a call asking for help with a pan handler outside a bar and grill. Apparently, some lady was harassing people in line, threatening, yelling, cursing, and urinating around the corner, but in view of anyone walking by. I neared the bar and coasted to a stop on my bike. About eight people waited to go inside. I then noticed who the panhandler was and groaned.Debbie. Again.

I set my bike aside and approaching her, threw up my hands. “Seriously,Debbie? Public intox? Public urination? Harassing people?” “I’m not doin’ anything,” she said, voice louder than necessary and a bit slurred. “Just sittin’ here.” “You’re obviously drunk,” I said. “The owner of the–”“He don’t own this sidewalk.” “No, but you–” “You just go arrest a real bad guy, Mr. Law Man.”

I pulled in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and exhaled. I said, “You can’t be harassing people or leaving puddles of urine on–” “You’re not in charge of me.” I raised my voice to talk over her constant interruptions. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Debbie sneered at me. “Yeah? Same to you, Moutsos.” “I have lots to do,” I said in a tight voice. “But I have to deal with stupid people like you instead.” Debbie cursed and called me some very impressive names.

I raised my voice and yelled over her, “This is what your life has come to, Debbie. Congratulations. Perpetually drunk and pissing in front of strangers. You’re a real winner, Debbie. A real winner.” Something I said, or perhaps the tone of my voice, affected Debbie. She flinched like someone had slipped an ice cube down her back. She blinked at me, expression horrified. Then her eyes turned shiny with accumulating tears that quickly spilled over onto her leathery cheeks. I sighed. I shouldn’t have been so harsh. Just give her a ticket, make her move on, and leave it at that.

Debbie grabbed a water bottle with no label and shoved it into her faded, scuffed backpack with one broken strap. She grabbed some papers, a plastic bowl and a few other items, and jammed them in various pockets of the backpack. She stood halfway, turning left then right, lifting up her backpack and setting it down again three times.

“Where’s my Bible?” Debbie said, a note of alarm in her voice “Where is it?” She whimpered and tugged snarly fistfuls of her hair. I frowned at the area around Debbie, but didn’t see a Bible. Debbie plopped down on her butt, hung her head, and rocked forward and back. “My Bible. My Bible. I lost my Bible.” I loomed over her, softened my voice, and said, “How did you get to this point, Debbie?”

She stopped rocking, but didn’t look up. I thought maybe she was too drunk to understand what I said, but she eventually spoke, so quiet that I had to lean closer to hear. “I used to have it all. They were so beautiful, those three little angels. My husband was good to me. Had a great job, too. It was all heaven…until it wasn’t.” I hunkered down beside her. “What happened?”

Debbie stared straight ahead, her body suddenly very still. “They just didn’t come home, my husband and three of my four kids. Just never came home. Traffic accident. All four died instantly. Gone. Forever. Just me and one daughter left behind. Couldn’t God take all or none of us? I just kept thinkin’ that.” My throat constricted and I turned away. I didn’t want Debbie to see the sudden, unexpected pain in my expression. After all, I was a tough cop, not a bleeding heart social worker.

I studied a cluster of ragged people gathered a way up the street on the corner near the homeless shelter. I wondered how many carried a story like this. Some life-shattering tragedy that they couldn’t cope with, a wound too deep to heal right. God must weep over these children. I certainly was now, tears stinging my eyes. I didn’t know why this had struck me so hard, how this moment found a crack in my emotional armor and exploited it.

Debbie stumbled away in the direction of the shelter. I shuffled to my bike and took one last look at Debbie’s shrinking form. I mounted my bike and peddled. I didn’t have the heart to write any more tickets that night. I just sat on a park bench, pondering, praying silently, wondering what I could do for Debbie.

The idea of buying her a new Bible recurred, but, each time, I dismissed it with the excuse that I worked for government. Shouldn’t mix church and state. Right? I remembered something I’d read not long ago. James Garfield had baptized over thirty people in one weekend when he’d been President of the United States. Well, if the president can baptize nearly three dozen people at a time, I could buy one person a Bible. I was just making excuses because what if she laughed in my face? Plus, something like this would embarrass me, especially if any of my fellow officers found out. I’d be teased to no end. Well,I thought, suck it up, Eric. This is what God would want you to do.

The next day, near the start of my shift, I ducked into a store and bought Debbie a new set of scriptures. I even had her name embossed in golden letters on the bottom of the front cover. My ticket goals for the day faded to the background as I focused on trying to locate Debbie. She usually camped out somewhere in the open, so I drove my cruiser up and down the streets that she frequented. I circled Pioneer Park a half dozen times.

One hour became two; two became three. I finally resorted to asking for help. With a growl, I snatched my car radio and asked if anyone had seen the infamous Debbie, but nobody had a location for her. After my dinner break, I received a call over the squad radio. Someone had located Debbie. In the background of the radio transmission, I could hear her yelling. I smiled wryly and shook my head. It seemed she was getting another ticket.

My smile faded, replaced by determination. I had to get there quick. Debbie always stormed off after she got a ticket and the sun was setting. Night would make finding her even harder. I knew I shouldn’t speed without a compelling reason. The public might complain and, in this case at least, rightfully so. I wondered what people would think if they knew a cop was speeding in an attempt to give a homeless woman a Bible.

I spotted the officer and Debbie. I pulled over alongside the officer’s bike, hopped out, and rushed around the car, a plastic bag clutched in my right fist. Debbie spotted me and glared. “Oh, great. He’s here.” I held up the plastic bag. “What the hell is that?” Debbie said. “Gonna swing it? Hit me in the head? Beat up some more on poor Debbie.”“Open it,” I said. Debbie’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”“Just take it and see.”

Debbie looked from me to the confused officer, then back to me. She said,“What? I get a ticket and a present? Is that how it goes now? Who are…?” Her voice trailed off as she held the Bible up in front of her face. She squinted at her name embossed at the bottom. Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open. With each blink, her eyes grew wetter. She hugged the book to her chest, hunched protectively over it as she trembled and sobbed.

Despite the officer beside me, I choked up a bit, too. I sniffled, cleared my throat, then gestured clumsily at the Bible. “I marked a few things. Just some stuff that I like. You know how–” Her hug cut me off. She was bony, but surprisingly strong. “Thank you.Thank you. Thank you.”

The officer beside me said, “So, um…” I flinched, remembering that I wasn’t alone here. “Hey,” he said to Debbie, “don’t worry about that ticket.” He glanced at me, then back to Debbie. “I won’t turn it in. Just try to stay out of trouble. Okay?” The officer slapped my shoulder and headed to his bike.

When Debbie ended her embrace and stepped back, something went with her: a hardness to my heart that I hadn’t realized was there. These people who broke the law, yeah, they did wrong, but they were still my brothers and sisters, still worthy of respect and love. Could I give a ticket to someone I cared about? I supposed I could, but it wouldn’t be the same. There wouldn’t be spite attached to it. There wouldn’t be disdain and a sense of my superiority over the offender. I would do my job, but I wouldn’t do it angrily. I would remember that I served the community — all of the community. Even a chronic pain in the butt like Debbie, who taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life about perspective.