Sarah Robinson, of Roeland Park, Kansas, became known as the shoplifting mother earlier this week, when she was caught leaving a local Walmart with a shopping cart full of $300 worth of diapers, baby wipes, and shoes for her six children.
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
Robinson’s husband died in 2011 in an accidental drowning, leaving her behind to take care of all their children. Two months ago, she lost her home in Kansas City and was forced to live in her car with her children. It got to a point that they weren’t having regular meals, and they weren’t able to keep themselves clean because they had no place to shower. Driven to desperation by the seemingly hopeless conditions of her family’s life, she said that her only option was to take what she needed to take care of her kids because she had no one else who she could ask for help from. When she tried to leave the store, the shoplifting mother was caught by the store manager, who stopped her and kept her there until the police arrived. Robinson was worried that she would get sent to jail, and that they would take her kids away from her.
An Unexpected Surprise
However, the officer who responded to the report of the shoplifting mother had something else in mind when he heard her story. Officer Mark Engravelle of the Roeland Park Police Department, himself a father of two young kids, said that when he saw the state that the family was in—living in their car, broke, and without shoes for the kids—it pulled on his heartstrings and he knew that arresting the shoplifting mother was not going to help anything. “What she did was wrong and against the law, but I think her heart was in the right place with wanting to take care of her children,” Engravelle said.
As a police officer, Engravelle still had to write Robinson a citation for shoplifting. However, instead of putting her in handcuffs and hauling her off to jail, he did what Robinson never expected anyone to do for her and her kids. He went through the store with them and paid for the diapers, shoes, clothes, and baby wipes with his own money, saying that he wanted to do right by the children, who thought he had come to take their shoplifting mother off to jail.
An Outpouring of Kindness and Support
Robinson’s case is now pending in the Roeland Park Municipal Court, but thanks to a further unexpected surprise, she won’t have any problems paying any penalties that she would incur. Since the incident was first reported in the local news stations of Roeland Park, countless strangers have reached out to the police department offering donations to help Robinson and her family out.
Over $6,000 has been donated so far, and because of the large volume of donations coming in, the police department is forwarding all donations to the Sarah J. Robinson Donation Account at Mission Bank in Roeland Park, Kansas. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, Sarah Robinson no longer has to be the shoplifting mother and can now focus on better living conditions for her and her children.
