California Police Officer Surprises Hardworking Teen with New Bike
By Adria Valdes Greenhauff, HeroFuel® Reporter
It was a typical Saturday night for California teen, Jourdan Duncan. The 18-year-old from Vallejo, California, headed home from work around 11 p.m., headphones in his ears, ready to trek for about two hours by foot.
Though his life wasn’t always like this, walking 16 miles a day became Duncan’s new normal after his car broke down over the summer. The teen didn’t mind, though. He was excited about his new job as a packaging line worker and wasn’t going to let anything stop him from earning a living. Nevermind that his usual 30-minute round trip commute had suddenly turned into nearly five hours.
“I don’t want to feel like I’m a burden to people, so I try to handle myself in my own way,” Duncan, who had refused to ask for rides from friends and family, told ABC News. “It’s not hard to walk.”
For Benicia Police Cpl. Kirk Keffer, someone walking down desolate Industrial Way wasn’t exactly what he expected to see while he drove through the area late one Saturday night.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Keffer told CNN. “ Industrial Way is never really traveled by foot. There are no sidewalks out there — just trucking companies, garbage companies — so he kind of took me by surprise.”
Assuming the teen’s car broke down somewhere down the road, the 11-year veteran did what any good police officer would do. He got out of the car to see if Duncan needed help and was shocked when the teen casually told him he was walking home.
“I said, ‘How do you plan on getting there?’” Keffer said. “He said, ‘Walk, like I always do.’ And I said, ‘You walk all the way to work and home two and a half hours each way?”
Keffer offered the teen a ride and by the time they got to Duncan’s home, he learned about the young man’s dream to become a California Highway Patrol officer and how he was currently saving money to go to college.
“I was just like, wow, Jourdan, that’s really impressive, your dedication and your hard work,” Keffer said to The Washington Post. “At age 18, that’s a good work ethic to have, and I said, you know, I admire that. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
The two parted ways but Duncan’s story stayed with Keffer.
“I was taken aback. There are not too many kids these days who will walk five hours to go to work and are saving money for college,” Keffer said.
Determined to help, Keffer shared the interaction with his sergeant, who, like Keffer, happened to be a board member of the Benicia Police Officers’ Association. The two decided getting the teen a bike would be the perfect gesture. They emailed the proposal to the association and it was approved within minutes.
By Monday, Keffer was in a local bike store purchasing Duncan’s gift. “I told [the owner] what was going on, so he helped me pick out a mountain bike because Benicia is very hilly,” Keffer said. He also got Duncan a helmet and a lighting system [donated by the bike shop] since the teen works at night.
Next up for Keffer was finding out how the department could surprise Duncan at work. Luckily, he was able to get in touch with the teen’s supervisor at Pro-Form Laboratories, and found out Duncan’s shift ended that night at 11:30 p.m. Joined by a few fellow Benicia police officers, Keffer headed over to surprise Duncan at work.
Surprised he was.
“I could see him inside the building looking at me like he was scared to come out, and I had to reassure him,” Keffer said. “I said, ‘You’re not in trouble — we want to give you something … he was really speechless.”
“I was like, wait, what? Is this some kind of trick?,” Duncan told The Washington Post he was thinking after receiving the gift. He was also surprised by how much media attention his story received. “I was so nervous; I’ve never been on TV,” said Duncan.
Duncan and Keffer have kept in touch, according to The Washington Post, and Keffer has offered to take the teen on a ride-along so he can get a first-hand look at what being a police officer is all about.
“The Command Staff of the Benicia Police Department is extremely proud of our officers,” Lt. Scott C. Przekurat told HeroFuel. “Cpl. Keffer exemplified an example of the core values of the Benicia Police Department when he took it upon himself to help improve the quality of a young man’s life by making it easier for him to get to and from work. This is what the men and women of the Benicia Police Department are all about, ‘working together with the community we serve.’”
