Kingstree Police want to keep seniors safe

KINGSTREE — Kingstree resident and retiree Pat Gillman enjoys gardening, but on Wednesday as she fought a weed that’s killing her fig tree, her work was interrupted by a welcome visitor.

The visitor was Kingstree Police Lt. Melvin Daniels, who greeted her with a hearty handshake and began to chat with her about painting, drawing and the love each shares for art.

He wasn’t paying her a visit because of any criminal activity. Rather, it’s because he wants to show police care about the town’s senior residents.

The department implemented a senior resident visitation program this year as a way to make sure older residents are safe.

Kingstree Police Chief Robert Ford said he got the idea for the program from none other than a senior resident.

“She was telling me how nervous she gets sometimes living alone,” Ford said. “She actually said that she wishes there was someone who would check on her on a regular basis. So we decided we would check on her and see if she was OK.”

News about the program spread quickly through Kingstree by word of mouth, he said.

Nine months later, Daniels is the primary officer responsible for visiting the 32 seniors in the program.

“Everyday I come in here, the chief gives me another name,” Daniels said. “It just keeps growing. The mayor, he even gave me name. We are really ecstatic about it because it’s giving back to the seniors a little bit of what they have given us all these years.”

Daniels said he breaks the group into two parts and tries to visit them every other day.

“The ones I don’t visit, I call,” he said. “One lady is so concerned that I have to call her every morning before 10 o’clock. She says if anything is going to happen, it’ll be before 10 o’clock. So even when I’m not working, I call.”

Even if they do have family members in the home or nearby, Gillman and others said they find it comforting to know police are checking on them.

“It’s very nice, I appreciate the visit very much,” Gillman said.

Ninety-two-year-old Kingstree resident Mary Cooper enjoys the visits, too. But she’s a hard person to find at home, Daniels said.

After being around for almost a century, Cooper, who is known as the “grandmother of Kingstree,” said she enjoys traveling to visit her family in Washington, D.C.

“I keep a bag packed,” Cooper said. “The plane is just like a car to me.”

Cooper said Daniels calls her in the mornings and is “her boy.”

She also said she doesn’t need a cane or walker to get around, takes only one pill a day and isn’t afraid of criminals.

“No, I can’t be afraid in my own home,” she said. “This was my husband’s home and when he died, he left me this little house.”

Because of the fear — or, in Cooper’s case, fearlessness — among older Kingstree residents, Ford came up with the idea to stencil a green tree on the sidewalk in front of every senior home on the visitation route.

“That will let EMS and the fire department know that a senior citizen is there,” Ford said.

It also lets officers working the night shift or a holiday know who lives there so they can go by and check on them.

“The way things are going now, just about every street in Kingstree is going to have that (tree) on there,” Daniels said.

Police also present seniors with a fruit basket at the end of the month of their birth, Ford said.

“At first, we wanted to give them flowers, but then we thought about it and said, ‘Well, no, they can’t eat flowers,’” Daniels said. “Everybody likes fruit ... you can see the joy in their faces.”