GREENFIELD — Michelle Balcom, 50, left her house on Deerfield Street with a full battery on her electric wheelchair and a lot of traveling ahead of her. She always remembers to charge it, and in two years of owning the chair, has never been left stranded with a dead battery.
Not so last Thursday when Balcom reached Subway on Federal Street, 1.4 miles away from her home, and noticed her battery was in the red. The battery is supposed to be good for 12 miles, and having gone to CVS on Main Street and to lunch at Subway, she knew she hadn’t traveled that far.
Unsure of what to do, Balcom tried to push the chair along Federal Street, but, as Balcom is on oxygen and has numerous ailments including arthritis, it was no easy task. By 3 p.m., she had managed to get as far as People’s United Bank on Federal Street, with another half-mile to go.
“It was getting to me and my back,” she said. “Apparently somebody saw me and (called the police) to get me help.”
Officer Michael McDowell, who joined the force last year, arrived to help. McDowell immediately contacted his sergeant, hoping to have Balcom and her chair transported in a van. Unfortunately, the two would need to wait until the van became available.
“After about five minutes or so, he started to notice the heat was getting to me,” Balcom said. Thursday’s weather was in the low 90s.
McDowell decided that Balcom could get out of the heat faster if he pushed the chair the rest of the way to her home.
“I was relieved,” Balcom said. “I was glad that he was there.”
However, she was also concerned for McDowell, who would need to walk back to his car.
“I was coming downhill,” she said. “I know (Bank Row) is a hard hill to climb.”
But McDowell was driven to get Balcom home safely, even parking the chair outside and assisting her into her house. Balcom’s worries were put to rest when the sergeant arrived to drive McDowell back to his car.
Balcom remembers thinking back to posts she had seen on Facebook about police violence, and how different the story can be.
“I’m thinking ‘OK, not all cops are like that,’” she said.
And McDowell himself has become a bit of a social media star. A photo of McDowell pushing Balcom in her chair was shared on the Greenfield Police Department’s Facebook page Thursday, and has since been shared nearly 250 times.