Page 51 - August 2017

et we soon Of cer endo
Wounded cop receives cards from Bridgeport children
n BY NICK SWEDBERG
Officer Victoria Mendoza ginger- ly approached a group of children at Wilson Park on July 31, using a walker to slowly inch forward and pausing every few seconds to smile or wave.
Mendoza, who has been with
Chicago police for two-and-a-half
years, had been shot in the leg while
responding to an armed robbery in
the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
After hearing the news, a group of
Bridgeport-area day campers decided to write cards to the wounded 9th District officer.
Just 10 days after the shooting, Mendoza met with the children inside a gym at the park to thank them for the get-well cards and answer their questions.
“When you take the time to make a card for someone... you do it because you’re sincere in what you’re doing,” said Mendoza. “No one told them to; they just asked to do it.”
She said she enjoyed the experience talking with the children.
On July 21, Mendoza and her partner were respond- ing to a reported armed robbery at a store. She said they came upon two men who were casually walking down
the street, but one matched the de- scription provided by dispatch. As they fled, one man looked back and grabbed at his waistband, she said.
The man began firing, Mendoza said, and one shot struck her leg. She said she didn’t notice until she tried to run after the gunman.
“I go to run, but I can’t run, and I feel my sock is wet,” she recalled.
Looking down, she noticed two holes in her pant leg. She would later learn that they were from the
through-and-through shot. After calling in that she had been shot, Mendoza started to apply a tourniquet but had trouble lifting her leg. A man from a nearby business came out and helped her raise her leg.
“At one point, I know he’s talking to me but I don’t hear anything, and I don’t feel pain either,” Mendoza recalled.
Mendoza didn’t feel the pain from the wound until hit- ting the first pothole on the way to the hospital, she said. The doctors estimate that it will take three to six months to recover, she said.
Mendoza, who goes by the nickname “Smiley” in the district, remains optimistic but said it could be a year be- fore she is back to 100 percent. d
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