Police help 101 year old Ruth Chavis get her window to the outside world back after a thief stole her pocketbook...

A woman of lesser grace and fewer years would have put the blame squarely
on the thief or thieves who lifted $400 out of her pocketbook as it sat in the middle of her one-bedroom apartment.

But not Ruth Chavis.

She is 101 years young, has spent most of those years as an evangelist and thanks God for each and every day she’s had.

Ruth is convinced the cash — which she was 
going to use to replace the broken TV she relied on for Christian programs with an occasional “Price Is Right” thrown in — went out the door with someone she trusted, someone who is supposed to assist her. So, yesterday, I asked if she felt betrayed.

“Well,” Ruth sighed, “I’m going to tell you something. The money was in my 
bag, right there by the couch. Now, our bishop teaches us not to have money lying around where people can see it, you understand.

“Because, he says, you’re tempting people to steal it. After all, we’re all God’s sinners, and sinners are 
going to steal. So, I asked God to forgive me. It was my fault, you see. I shouldn’t have had the money there where people could see it.

“But after it was gone, it was gone,” Ruth said, “and so I was waiting on the Lord to see what He was going to do about it.”

Well, the Lord, prompted by a call from Ruth, sent Boston Police B-2 detective Donnie Lee to visit this lovely centenarian in her apartment at Mission Park. He told Marie Miller, the B-2 Community Relations officer who specializes in senior care issues, about Ruth.

“When I went to see her,” Miller was saying yesterday, “Ruth told me her TV had died and the money she had her social worker withdraw from the bank was supposed to pay for a new one.

“She is wracked with 
arthritis, and recently had a surgery. ... She is an amazing woman who lost her only daughter years ago. And believe me, Ruth is as sharp as a tack, which is why Donnie and I don’t believe she misplaced the money. She knew exactly where it was and that it was gone.”

On her own, Miller sent an email through the Area B-2 rank and file, asking for a donation of $1 to help a 101-year-old woman 
replace one of her only links to the outside world.

“In three days,” 
Marie Miller said, “B-2 cops stuffed that bucket with $500 in cash. So, we went over to Best Buy and they gave us a discount on a new set.”

BPD Deputy Superintendent Randall Halstead controls one of the busiest sections in this city. Yesterday afternoon, he joined Marie Miller and BPD spokesman officer Jamie Kenneally and spent more than an hour delivering, and assembling, Ruth Chavis’ new Samsung 32-inch window on the world.

“Ruth,” Halstead, said, after sweating through the assembly, “you more than deserve this. I want to say that you’ve been officially adopted as the den mother of Area B-2.”

When the time came to leave, Halstead carried out the empty box and said, “That lady is living history. And what we did is what policing is really all about.”