Woman Called Police, Convinced She Was in Danger at Home. A Kind Officer Realized the Real Problem (Exclusive)

Last spring, Joshua Hobson was among the first officers from the Bethlehem Police Department in Pennsylvania to arrive to the scene of a dangerous four-alarm fire.

“Send every firetruck you have,” he said over his police radio on May 2, 2025, as he pulled up to a burning apartment building. He then climbed each of its five floors to urge residents to flee.

With another officer’s help, amid thick smoke and flames, Hobson carried to safety an elderly woman using a wheelchair who had been trapped in her top-floor apartment.

The officers’ actions earned them commendations as well as a Distinguished Service Award from the city of Bethlehem, one of three Hobson’s received in the last two years.

But its Hobson’s actions more recently, just last week — while responding to a report of a potential burglary — that have gone viral.

During an overtime shift on Wednesday, Jan. 7, Hobson, who typically works on the city’s south side, was dispatched to the home of an 88-year-old woman on the north side of Bethlehem who was concerned she had been the victim of a burglary.

Hobson tells PEOPLE he determined that the woman’s home had not been burglarized but he does suspect she may have been taken advantage of by a man she’d trusted to do light handiwork, including replacing the lock on her front door.

The man, Hobson soon realized, had improperly installed a keyless deadbolt lock.

“It was just there for looks and so the deadbolt didn’t line up,” Hobson says.

The woman — whose home was otherwise in incredible shape, according to Hobson — couldn’t lock her door and consequently felt unsafe there.

She told Hobson she was on a fixed income and worked a couple of days a week as a house cleaner but that she had canceled her jobs and was sleeping in her living room because she was afraid someone would enter her house.

Hobson, 40, decided he’d fix the problem himself once he got permission from a supervisor to travel outside the city during work.

His supervisor later sent a letter to their police chief, who shared an account of the events in a statement on the department’s Facebook page that went viral.

But Hobson wasn’t thinking about any sort of attention.

“I’m working overtime, so I’m blessed to have extra hours — by no means a millionaire, but clearly I’m not on a fixed income,” he says he remembers thinking when confronted with the woman’s issue. “So I said, ‘I’ll just go and I’ll just buy you a new doorknob and I’ll take care of it for you.’ ”

And he did, with his supervisor’s blessing.

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“I went to Home Depot, got her a doorknob with a key and I came back and I installed it for the cost of a cup of coffee and a muffin,” he tells PEOPLE. “She made me a cup of coffee and a muffin. We had, like, a little breakfast date.”

Hobson wrote in a police report that he also filled the screw holes that “the unidentified hobbyist put in the door” and advised the woman to be cautious of who she allows in and around her home “as people are not all kind and may take advantage of her.”

Emily Schock, a sergeant who is among Hobson’s supervisors, tells PEOPLE this is one in a string of examples of Hobson bringing plaudits to their department.

He just started his 14th year there, and Schock says she’s known him since he first joined. She has nominated him for three awards in recent years, including a letter of commendation for coming to the aid of a suicidal man in August 2024. She plans to nominate him again for his work on the woman’s lock.

Hobson, who doesn’t come from a law enforcement family, says his most recent act of kindness earned him acknowledgment from two of his most valued critics: his 12-year-old son, Bryce, and his daughter, Avery, who is 14.

“My kids think it’s cool that it’s become viral,” he says.