Package theft takes heartwarming turn

Woman tracks down man who stole packages from her doorstep...and promises to help him turn his life around.

December 13, 2019

NBC News,

(NBC News) INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – His dirt-covered hands and fingernails are as gritty as the life he leads.

“I wake up every day and go try and find a way to eat,” says 34-year-old Cole, who says he’s addicted to drugs and living on the streets.

He doesn’t want to say his last name, in case his family reads this story.

“I’ve basically ran over every bridge I ever built with a torch,” Cole says, explaining his family wants nothing to do with him because of his addictions. “I’ve been to shelters but they’re getting so overcrowded.”

So for the past two weeks, Cole’s home has been underneath the Westfield bridge in Indianapolis, Indiana.

That’s about to change, though, because of a decision Cole made Monday night and the grace a stranger extended to him despite that decision.

“Monday night I had some packages being delivered and I saw they were marked ‘delivered’ and I went down to grab them and they weren’t there,” says 32-year-old Sabrina Schroeder.

When the pediatric nurse checked video from her outdoor surveillance cameras at her Broad Ripple home, she saw a man walk up to her home and take those packages. The video’s timestamp told Sabrina the man had been there only moments earlier.

So she decided to get on her bike with her boyfriend and try to track him down. She spotted the suspected thief in an alley.

That man turned out to be Cole.

“I saw Cole and kind of approached him and just said, ‘Hey, you grabbed my packages. I’d like them back now,'” Sabrina recalls. “I could just see his face crumble a little bit and he said that he had thrown them in the bushes.”