Page 44 - FOP August 2019 Magazine

14th District officer helps
two children live happily ever after
Officer Juan Diaz has plenty of stories from the 22 years that he’s been on the job in the 14th District. Some are funny, some are tragic and some are unbelievable.
This particular story starts out sad and ends triumphantly un- forgettable. It’s the story of Baby Erin.
On a warm summer day in 2013, Diaz received a call to a household for a well-being check. It wasn’t the first time that the CPD had been called to this residence of an elderly handicapped woman that day. Earlier that morning, officers had to remove one of the woman’s three daughters from the home.
Assuming that he was about to deal with the same disorderly daughter, Diaz entered the home ready to settle a domestic dis- pute. That’s when he met Baby Erin for the first time.
“Baby Erin was in a dirty diaper sleeping on the floor on top of her mother’s purse,” Diaz recalled.
The sight of the child stopped Diaz in his tracks as he won- dered whose baby this was, and why she was left sleeping on the floor. The concerned officer soon found out that Baby Erin was the woman in the wheelchair’s granddaughter and the child of a drug addict who was also a prostitute. Diaz took one look at the mother and knew that she was unfit to raise this baby on her own, and the grandmother insisted that her handicap made it impossible to take on the responsibility.
“There was no way I could leave the baby with her,” Diaz ex- plained. “I had to do something.”
It can be a difficult decision for an officer to call the Depart- ment of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to have a child taken out of a household, but this was the obvious next step for Diaz. He made the call. Diaz soon gained confirmation that it was the right call to make when the child was later taken to the hospital for incessant crying, only to find out that she had been living with an untreated broken leg.
A month later, Diaz testified in court to help get custody of Baby Erin removed from the mother. After the court session, he met Linda Panico, the foster parent who was taking care of Erin and hoping to adopt the child. Panico commended the work of Diaz and asked for his contact information to keep in touch. Diaz would soon find out that his connection to Baby Erin was here to stay, as the Panico family began to raise the girl with the CPD hero who saved her close at hand.
“Since that day six years ago, they have made it a point to always keep me in mind,” Diaz explained. “She’s invited me to birthday parties, we exchange gifts at Christmastime, and I’ve even brought my own girls out there to meet her.”
But the story doesn’t end here. Six years later, Diaz received a surprising phone call. As it turned out, Erin’s birth mother had another child that was taken away by DCFS. The little boy’s name was Taylor and Panico wanted to adopt him so that he could grow up with his sister. Diaz knew that he couldn’t miss this spe- cial adoption ceremony. As soon as Diaz entered the courtroom on July 17, Erin spotted the officer in the crowd.
“You should have seen the look on Erin’s face when she saw
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14th District Officer Juan Diaz stands with Erin Karen Panico after she was
Siblings Erin and Taylor Panico stand with their hero, Officer Juan Diaz, who helped give them an opportunity to live a better life.
me walk into court,” Diaz shared. “She got so excited. She was looking back at me, saying, ‘There he is!’”
The officer watched proudly as Erin was united with her little brother. Others in the room might have wondered what the CPD officer was doing there, but for Erin and the rest of the Panico family, there was no question. Diaz was the link that brought this family together.
“As coppers, we have lots of stories,” Diaz added. “This story makes up for all of the bad ones.”