Guiding Lights
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Jose Ramos
Police
On his way home after a shift, Officer Jose Ramos took his bike and rode through Doyle Drury’s apartment complex in hopes of catching a thief who’d been stealing from vehicles parked in the apartment garage.
 
Ramos noticed that Drury’s car had been broken into. A few levels higher in the garage, he spotted a suspected burglar.

Ramos talked to the suspect and established rapport with him, which allowed him to retrieve all Drury’s stolen items without a fight, Drury wrote.

“Hopefully, this will put an end to the many burglaries we’ve experienced recently,” Drury wrote. “Officer Ramos went above and beyond the call of duty, which is truly a mark of a professional. His actions reflect highly on the whole police department.”

Tina Spada
Aviation
After flying into Hobby Airport, Suzette Zimmer left her business laptop in a cab.

“Needless to say, I was extremely upset thinking that I might not be able to locate it,” she wrote. “All my personal information could be retrieved by logging on.”

When she called the airport, Tina Spada was patient and supportive, Zimmer wrote. Zimmer couldn’t remember the cab’s number, color or company. So Spada reviewed security tapes, often calling Zimmer to assure her that she would find the cab.

Then, she did. She spotted Zimmer and her boss getting into a cab. She called the cab company and found the laptop.

“What an amazing, professional person,” Zimmer wrote. “Thank you for having a person of her caliber represent the city. She is a true lifesaver.”

Derrick Hall
Police
While driving west on Highway 290 at 1 a.m., Katie McMillian saw debris in the road. She was surrounded by traffic, and swerving might have meant hitting another vehicle. So she ran over the debris, wrote her parents, Susan and Bruce McMillian.

Only, as she went over it, Katie McMillian realized it was a person she was running over, the McMillians wrote. A man and a woman had struggled in the vehicle in front of her, and the man had either jumped out of the car or been shoved out. Then the woman continued on, leaving the man in the road.

Katie McMillian pulled over, called police and her parents. She was sobbing when her parents arrived. Officer Derrick Hall calmed her down, the McMillians wrote.

“Such wickedness should not be forced upon anyone, and I witnessed my innocent daughter who was filled with joy at her impending wedding forced to see the evils associated with a homicide,” the McMillians wrote.

“However, in the darkness of that Saturday morning, Officer Derrick Hall represented everything good and decent. He was like a great column stabilizing the force of crashing marble. He has gone beyond his duty, checking on Katie’s condition.

“He is a peace officer in every sense of the words.”

Michael Donato
Police
The police presence at Hobby Airport has always been greatly appreciated, wrote Shirley Palacios, who works for Southwest Airlines. But recently, its been even more appreciated because of a new sergeant assigned to the airport who has been a breath of fresh air.

“Sgt. Michael Donato came into Hobby and made his presence known,” Palacios wrote. Each day, Donato walks around to check on all the employees and say hi to the passengers.

During one busy, hectic, stormy Friday, the airport’s fueling system was down. “Chaos doesn’t do the day justice. I was surrounded by angry passengers and couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Palacios wrote.

Donato noticed the chaos and stepped in to help with crowd control. The passengers were no happier with him, but it didn’t phase him, Palacios wrote. Donato politely imposed order.

“He was wonderful with the passengers,” Palacios wrote. “I’m sure that, as a sergeant, that was not his job, nor did he have to spend his time getting beat up by angry passengers. Yet he did.

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