Jalesia was walking to work one day when she was stopped by a police officer. At first, she was confused when he ordered her to get into the car, but the officer’s intentions were about to become clear. She saw the car in her peripheral vision and quickened her pace, trying to ignore the vehicle slowly sliding up to the curb next to her. There was nowhere to run, so she put her head down and continued walking, silently pleading, “Not today.”
The car continued to slow down beside her, and then the driver honked his horn. She then saw the telltale blue and red lights of a cop car. Sergeant Scott Bass from the Nash County Sheriff’s Office was driving along in his cruiser when he noticed a familiar figure up ahead on the road. He was passing the Stonegate Mobile Home Community and had hoped to find her there. He had some business with her that day, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Jalesia Corbett was making her way to Bojangles. It was raining hard, and she had tried to open her umbrella, only for it to be whipped out of her hands by the freezing wind. She had a long way to go yet, but she plodded on through the torrents of water, stepping carefully over the pools that swirled and conspired to break her footing. The last thing she wanted was for the cop to stop her that day. Jalesia was tired; her feet were wet and aching. Even though she had been careful to wear her most comfortable pair of sneakers, she could feel her blisters starting to rub raw. Every day, she fought her way through the cold to reach Bojangles and then made the long trip back home. It was a total of 12 miles on foot, and her family depended on it.
Until one day, when the cop stopped her, everything changed. “Come down from here and just keep walking and get all the way down,” he slowly pulled up alongside her, rolled down his window, and beckoned for her to come closer. There was nowhere to run, so she couldn’t ignore him any longer. She feared the worst, and her head started to spin. She was in trouble, and she knew it. There was no getting out of this; the day had finally come.
She walked over to the cruiser and noted with fear that it had “Sheriff Nash County” emblazoned on its side. Gingerly, she approached the driver’s window and braced herself for what the cop had to say. She heard the words entering her brain, but she couldn’t quite grasp what Sergeant Scott Bass was saying. Then, the words slowly assembled themselves into meaning, and her eyes widened with disbelief. Sergeant Scott Bass asked her to please get into the vehicle and that she shouldn’t be on the street.
In a flood of stuttering and panic, she tried to explain to him that her livelihood depended on her getting to Bojangles. But he didn’t seem to be listening. Well, she was in the vehicle now, she thought, and she wasn’t about to argue with the law. Her fate now rested entirely in his hands. She sat in silence, wondering where he was taking her. She entwined her fingers and placed them over her chest protectively, and then let them fall into her lap with a sigh. Appearing nervous wasn’t going to help anything. Was he taking her in for questioning? She glanced at him shiftily, but he continued to drive through the rain, his eyes on the road ahead. She was not comfortable with this situation. After all, this man had just ordered her into his car, and she had stupidly complied. She should have run, she thought, even if he was a cop. Could she trust him, and where was he taking her?
“My name is Scott Bass,” he said, breaking the silence. “If you want to work, you’ll find your way to work. But if you don’t want to work, hey, I can’t help you.” In the headlights, she saw the sign looming through the downpour. He had taken her to her workplace, Bojangles. While he was commuting to the Sheriff’s Office of Nash County, Sergeant Scott Bass had noticed that Jalesia was wearing a Bojangles uniform and had realized with dismay that she had been making the 12-mile journey on foot to work every day. “I felt hardship for her because I understand it, you know. You don’t see a lot of people here that, no matter what weather conditions, they’re gonna walk for hours to work and then stand up for another eight or nine hours,” he said.
That’s when he decided to give her a lift. Nobody, he thought, should have to walk in such bad weather. But his kindness wasn’t about to end there. “We’ve been knowing each other for about a year and a half now, and I try to pick her up when I can if I could, and I tell my guys to be in the area if they were able to.” Sergeant Scott Bass continued to give Jalesia lifts to work whenever the weather turned bitter and whenever she would allow it. He offered her a ride because she had quite a few miles to go before she got to work. “She walks about six to seven miles one way to go to work. It normally took her two hours to walk to Bojangles and two hours to walk back home each day,” he explained. So, she welcomed the gesture.
Sergeant Bass was impressed with her perseverance and determined to do more. He hastily contacted the local Walmart to see if they could help. “I wanted to do something more for her,” he said. The next day, he called Walmart, which was in the area, and told them if they could work with him on something. Then, he did something that would change her life forever.
Jalesia waited in anticipation. Sergeant Bass said that he wanted to meet with her, and she was nervous. Maybe he was reprimanding her, although she had no idea what she had done. She wondered as she saw him, he called her over, and she didn’t know what was about to happen. Then, he pulled something large from his car and proudly presented it to her. It was a brand new Schwinn Fair Haven women’s cruiser bicycle.
“I wanted to help Jalesia. The fact that, you know, maybe I can save you an hour from walking so you can rest another hour. I’ve had the opportunity to get to know her and wanted somehow to lessen her burden of that 12-mile walk,” Sergeant Bass recalled later.
The video hosted by CBS 17 on YouTube has since gained over 6,000 views and hundreds of comments in just a few weeks. The post that the Nash County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook in commemoration of Sergeant Scott Bass’s kindness has also been extremely well-received by the community. They are proud to have such a generous member and are always ready to step up for people in need.
“I was shocked,” Jalesia said of the incredible gift. “I didn’t think it was real.” She is extremely grateful that she doesn’t have to make the arduous 12-mile journey on foot anymore. “He was making jokes. There were some people that said, ‘Oh, I can’t come in.
