A San Bernardino County deputy has taken scores of burglary reports over his 11 years, but one that left a family without many personal possessions right before Christmas stuck with him.
"Mommy, why did they take my jackets? Mommy, why would they take my movies?" the deputy remembered one of the children asking their mother after the crime.
When Dep. Kevin Riberich came to take a report with the Adelanto family - hit with the loss less than a month before Christmas - it really stuck with him.
"I can only recall a handful of calls for service that have impacted me the way this call did," Riberich said. "[The children's] innocence was so profound, it made me realize how personal this burglary was to them. And how these burglars took items that truly had meaning to their owners."
Usually, the Sheriff's Employees' Benefit Association, an organization that represents law enforcement professionals, takes deserving children on a $200 shopping spree for the Shop with a Cop program.
But this year, Riberich went the extra mile, writing a letter pleading with the organization to help Yvette Santa Maria and her three children.
The organization really came through, and Riberich got to see the family again, presenting them with a $1,000 shopping spree at an Apple Valley Target. The children's mother also got an extra surprise at the end of the trip: a $500 gift card for her to buy presents for her kids, Austin Hammar, 4, Moises Chiquete, 15, and Yiriatza Chiquete, 13, who goes by "Edie."
