Louisville 92-year-old left ‘tickled’ and thankful after officer mows her lawn

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Having a freshly mowed lawn can make anyone smile, and one 92-year-old west Louisville woman is enjoying hers thanks to a kind Louisville Metro Police Department officer.

“It tickles me,” Ruby Morris said. “I’m glad. I’m thankful.”

She said she keeps herself active by working on her lawn in Portland.

“I just love it,” she said. “I remember my mother and everything on the farm that helped us do things.”

A recent bout of dehydration forced her into a 4-day hospital stay and out of the yard.

“(The doctors) wanted me to drink more water,” Morris said. “They said I wasn’t drinking enough water, but I drink four to five bottles a day, not counting the coffee I drink.”

Morris’ neighbors were worried when they did not see her around and called the police, who found no sign of her at home. After returning the next day, they found the salt of the earth senior on her porch with her pups, but the only thing on Morris’ mind was her overgrown lawn.

“I told him I had to cut my grass, and he had known I had just gotten out of the hospital,” she said. “‘He said, ‘I’ll cut your grass. Where’s the weed eater, lawnmower?’”

So, Officer Stephen Hobbs, in the middle of his shift, cut Morris’ grass.

“I think there’s a lot of good people out here in every profession,” Hobbs said. “A lot of police are good. A lot of things that they do that people just don’t see and hear about. So, I guess this is just the one thing that kind of caught on, I guess.”

Hobbs’ partner snapped a picture of his gesture that turned into social media gold, showing a side of the badge hardly bragged about but sometimes needed.

“I just couldn’t wonder why somebody would care that much for me,” Morris said.

A simple welfare check and a small lawn on 32nd Street, with the grass a little too tall for comfort, that led to the most unlikely of friendships.