Home Depot lends helping hand to Jackson officer
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SOUTH JACKSON — Help poured in Monday for a local hero, Sgt. Mike Thomas with the Jackson Police Department. Home Depot reached out to the family to do a spring spruce-up around their home. “The extent of the effort has literally left us speechless,” Thomas said. And his family says they’re overjoyed. Nearly a dozen volunteers from Home Depot came out to lend a helping hand. Jeremy Johnson, the Team Depot Captain, said, “I know Officer Thomas isn’t really in shape enough to get out and do it himself, so we’re going to help him out.” Thomas hasn’t been able to do much himself while recovering from surgery after surgery, after he was violently beaten at a Jackson gas station in February. “We wanted to get out and kind of show the local law enforcement that we’re backing them and that we’re going to help ’em out as much as we can.” Team Depot’s captain, Jeremy Johnson, heard about Sgt. Thomas’s assault and took action. “We came over to the house and ask a few, asked what things they wanted to have done around the house,” Johnson said. “Then just pointed out a few things we could kind of do, kind of help out, just to kind of spruce up the house and make it look a little better.” Home Depot brought in a crew of about eleven people to do all the various projects around Thomas’ home. Johnson said Team Depot did between eleven and twelve-hundred dollars worth of renovations and landscaping and also installed a brand-new faucet and dryer. “Home Depot has a fund for Team Depot, for us to get out and kind of give a little bit back to the community,” Johnson said. Thomas said the kindness has left his family humbled. “When you get put in the situation and you get the support you do, it’s like I said, it’s just, I didn’t know what to say,” he said. “I’m still, the words, are amazing and humbling — speechless is about all I can come up with.” Thomas says he’s excited to get back to work, but his doctors say fractures in his face must heal first.
