His blood was boiling as he watched the videos that his neighbor had recorded. Why in the world would his wife ever think of doing something like that?
He had been trying to interpret her unusual behavior for months. Her secretiveness and wishy-washy explanations were puzzling to him all the way. But now, he finally was closer to finding out what was going on.
Marvin and his wife Jaylesya lived in the small town of Red Oak, in North Carolina. Marvin worked in a warehouse and Jaylesya was a housewife. They had been married for 20 years.
To anyone who knew them, they were the perfect image of a humble, yet happy and steady marriage. And even though every marriage has its skeletons in the closet, there didn’t seem to be any of those with Jaylesya and Marvin.
Marvin himself took pride in how simple and headache-free their lives had been as common country folks. He felt pity and contempt for people from big cities who couldn’t stay still and get their heads together about what they wanted in life.
He was convinced that he and his wife had figured their lives out; now, all they had to do with their time on this planet was comfortably grow old together. Or that’s what he thought.
After years of providing jobs for multiple people in the area, the warehouse where Marvin used to work suddenly entered a difficult time. This was related to changes in the supply chain of which it was a part, and there was not much that could be done about it.
So they started firing people. They also started giving their workers fewer hours, thus leaving them with less money to take home at the end of each week. All Marvin could do was hope that the situation would improve, or at least that it wouldn’t get much worse.
But things got even worse. After a few months, he was taking home half of what he used to. It got to a point where he and Jaylesya were having a hard time paying the bills.
So they both agreed on what was a necessary change: Jaylesya would have to start working. Soon enough, she found a job helping in a restaurant’s kitchen. It paid alright, but there seemed to be just one problem.
The restaurant was 6 miles away from the couple’s house – a 12-mile trip there and back. They had to figure out how Jaylesya would get there every morning, as there weren’t even any buses running that route and she didn’t have a driver’s license.
Marvin had a car: but with all the recent changes, his shifts were quite unpredictable. Some weeks he had to work nights, some weeks it was early mornings, and he may not always be able to drive his wife to the restaurant. But Jaylesya knew what to do.
She compromised and vowed to walk to work every single day so Marvin could drive to the warehouse whenever he needed. It was a sacrifice she felt like she had to make.
Marvin was moved by his wife’s willingness to do her best to help with their situation. He promised her that he would do everything in his power to make sure that things would get better. But in time, some things about his wife’s decision made him feel a little suspicious.
Jaylesya would refuse to let Marvin drive her to the restaurant even on his days off. Marvin was puzzled by this. Why would she prefer to walk 10 miles on her own through that old dusty road even when he had nothing better to do than to drive her?
“It must be really tiring to walk all the way there. Let me drive you over there, I ain’t working anyway,” Marvin would often tell her when he came back home from the night shift. But she would always refuse and happily get on her way. Why was she doing that?
She used to tell Marvin that it wasn’t so bad, that she could use a little exercise anyway, and that she didn’t want to bother him and deprive him of his well-deserved rest.
And at first, Marvin believed her. But after a few weeks, someone sent him some videos that made his blood boil. His wife had been concealing something from him.
It was his neighbor who gave him the news. He lived by the road that his wife had to walk through to get to the restaurant. He had seen her doing something unusual several times, and he had decided to record her and send the footage to Marvin’s phone so he could see what was up.
The videos showed Jaylesya strolling down the road, stopping somewhere near the neighbor’s house, and getting into two different cars. The most surprising thing about it was that one of them was a police car. What in the world was she up to?
After receiving the videos, Marvin spent some time thinking of what to do about it. When Jaylesya got home, the first thing he did was ask her if she had walked all the way to the restaurant and back.
“Yes honey, just like every day. But let me tell you something, I’m starting to like it.” Marvin could barely contain his anger and disappointment. How could she be lying to him like that? But he decided that he would play dumb and not confront her about the videos; he had something better in mind to expose his wife.
On his next day off, he decided to follow Jaylesya to work to see what she was up to. Why was she getting into people’s cars? For all he knew, she may not even be going to the restaurant.
So he pretended to be asleep while his wife left the house. Then he got dressed, got out, and followed her from a discreet distance. And after a while, she saw it: she was getting into a police car again!
Marvin ran towards his wife. She saw him and immediately, her face changed from a friendly smile to an ashamed grimace. An officer came out of the vehicle when he saw what was happening. “What the heck is going on here?”, Marvin asked.
Jaylesya broke down crying and assured her husband that she would tell him everything. She hadn’t been walking to the restaurant all those days.
For the first few days, she had just walked to the restaurant, but it was exhausting. And one day, a police officer that used to drive through that road regularly offered her a lift. She was moved by his kindness and accepted his offer; and it had been going on since then.
Sometimes the officer used the police car and sometimes he used his own car. But he had been driving Jaylesya to work every single day. But why? Why hadn’t she just let Marvin drive her? And why hadn’t she told him anything?
She answered that she didn’t want to disturb him and take away from him some rest time after his long days at the warehouse. And she hadn’t told him anything because she was afraid of what Marvin would think about her getting into a car with another man.
She knew that he had a lot on his plate, and she would rather not add more worries to his life. Then, the cop approached Marvin and told him about the day he’d met Jaylesa.
Sgt. Scott Bass from the Nash County Sheriff’s Office had been driving along in his cruiser when he’d noticed a familiar figure appear on the road ahead.
He was passing the Stone Gate Mobile Home Community, and he had hoped to find her there. But he had some business with her that day, and he wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer.
That day, Jaylesya had been making her way to Bojangles – the restaurant she had started working at. 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. She thought of Marvin and how she had to do something to help.
That day, Jaylesya was more tired than usual. Her feet were wet and aching, and 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, but Marvin was depending on her. Until one day, the cop stopped her. Then everything changed.
The cop, seeing her struggle through the rain, slowly pulled up alongside her, rolled down his window, and beckoned for her to come closer. Was there a problem?
Jaylesya had never trusted cops. She immediately feared the worst, and her head started to spin. Was she really in trouble just for walking to work in the rain?
Jaylesya walked over to the cruiser and noted with fear that it had “Sherriff, 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 Sgt. Scott Bass was saying. Then the words slowly assembled themselves into meaning, and her eyes widened with disbelief.
Sgt. Scott Bass asked her to please get into the vehicle, and told her that she shouldn’t be on the street. In a flood of stuttering and panic, she tried to explain to him that their 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.
Jaylesya sat in silence in the officer’s car, 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.
Jaylesya had not been at all comfortable with the 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? Her mind raced with possibilities. She wished Marvin was here. Then, 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, Sgt. Scott Bass had noticed that Jaylesya 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.
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.
Sgt. Scott Bass explained that he had continued to give Jaylesya lifts to work every single day. It normally took her two hours to walk to Bojangles, and two hours to walk back home each day.
After her initial panic from being stopped by a cop, she welcomed the gesture. Marvin was moved by the officer’s generosity, but the cop’s kindness didn’t end there.
After speaking to Marvin and learning about the couple’s situation, Sgt Bass was impressed with Jaylesya’s perseverance and determination to help support her husband during difficult times.
He hastily contacted the local Walmart to see if they could help. He wanted to try and do something to improve Jaylesya and Marvin’s circumstances.
One morning, Sgt. Bass had said that he wanted to meet with Jaylesya. Lingering feelings of distrust made her think that she was somehow about to be reprimanded by the Sgt, although she hadn’t the faintest idea what she had done.
As she wondered, 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 presented it to her proudly. It was a brand-new Schwinn Fairhaven Women’s Cruiser bicycle.
“I wanted to help Jaylesya and Marvin because she walks six miles to work every day regardless of the temperature, rain or shine, stands on her feet during her entire shift and walks six miles under the same conditions back to her home — and that is truly admirable,” Sgt Bass explained.
“I’ve had the opportunity to get to know her and her husband and wanted somehow to lessen her burden of that 12-mile walk.”
The interview, posted by CBS 17 on Youtube, has since gained over 6000 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 Sgt. Scott Bass’ 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,” Jaylesya 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.
Thanks to the kindness of one cop who was determined to help the people in his community, Jaylesya can continue to help her husband. Things were looking up for the first time in weeks.
