A Surprising Friendship Between a Worn-Out Mom and an Aging Cop
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 737 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Heidi Viars spent her days juggling kids and household chaos, convinced she didn’t have room for much else. Her neighbor, Tom, kept mostly to himself after retiring from the Chicago police force, and the two lived side by side without knowing each other for years. Things shifted the day Heidi slowed down enough to notice he was slipping. One small act of kindness led to another until a simple check-in became something deeper. Their friendship grew in quiet moments, shared rides, and the kind of trust that forms when two people step into each other’s lives at just the right time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.4 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. |
| 0:21.7 | But our favorite stories, well, they're yours. They're our listeners' story. And they're just ordinary folks |
| 0:25.8 | telling stories about their lives. This story is one just like that. And it's a story about |
| 0:31.6 | neighborly kindness. Heidi lives with her six kids in Green Lake, Wisconsin. A man named |
| 0:36.8 | Tom moved into their neighborhood |
| 0:38.1 | when he retired as a police officer from Chicago. Heidi and Tom were neighbors for almost |
| 0:43.2 | 15 years before they got to know each other. Tom was in his 80s and extremely introverted. Heidi, |
| 0:49.2 | well, she was a busy mom who didn't think she had time to invest in a grumpy old man. |
| 0:54.5 | Something changed in Heidi's heart, though, and she began reaching out to this older gentleman |
| 0:59.1 | who was quickly declining in health. |
| 1:01.3 | Here's Heidi sharing her story about the relationship between herself and her elderly neighbor |
| 1:07.9 | Tom. |
| 1:09.5 | It just takes time. |
| 1:12.6 | Tom wasn't dying. |
| 1:14.3 | Well, that is, he wasn't dying as quickly as everyone expected. |
| 1:18.5 | The nurses and the doctors, the kids, and even the chief of police, |
| 1:22.8 | didn't think he'd be here this long. |
| 1:26.2 | He was 83 and so stubborn and certainly hated people doting over him. |
| 1:32.4 | He told me so many times. He wanted to die at home and not here in this hospital. |
| 1:41.0 | But I don't think we get to choose how we travel that last part of the journey. |
... |
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