Monday may have been Calhoun County Deputy John Scheetz’s birthday, but he was the one who gave a special gift to someone else.
The deputy was called out to Four Mile Creek Park Monday morning after a work crew doing maintenance at the site found someone sleeping on a picnic table.
The 56-year-old man, whose name was Michael, arrived in Florida earlier this year with some other homeless people to escape the cold. At one point, he was staying in a homeless shelter in Panama City, and since that time, wound up in Calhoun County, where he had been getting some help from the folks at Hillcrest Baptist Church.
He told the deputy he was staying at the park while waiting on a check to arrive that had been forwarded to him in care of the church.
The two men talked for a few minutes. Then the deputy asked about Michael’s family.
Michael, who is from Colorado, told him he hadn’t seen his family in 20 years and didn’t even know if his mother was still living. He explained that he understood she had moved some years ago but wasn’t sure about the name of the town.
Even if he had known where she lived, he said he didn’t have a cell phone to contact her and didn’t know how to use a computer to attempt to search for her.
“What’s her name?” Scheetz asked. Once he got her full name, he contacted directory assistance and asked for any listings under her name. He found one in Colorado Springs.
He called the number and when it began ringing, he handed the phone over to Michael.
After a moment, he heard Michael ask, “Mom?” Then there were tears.
The two talked and made plans to reunite. Michael said that as soon as his check arrived, he would get a bus ticket and head out to see her.
Before the call ended, Michael handed the phone back to the deputy so that his 85-year-old mother could thank him.
“I’ve been praying for years that one day he would pick up the phone and call me or show up on my doorstep,” she told Scheetz. “I knew this day would come.”
“When I broke the news to her that he was homeless, she began crying,” the deputy said. She said she told Michael, “You could have always come home.”
Now he will.
Amid the thanks from the long-estranged pair, Michael told the deputy, “This is the best day of my life.”
It was a pretty good one for John Scheetz, too.