Rome: An elderly couple, Jole, aged 89, and her husband, Michele, 94, experiencing a sense of lonely despair so desperate it brought them to wailing. Neighbors heard cries and other sounds of distress coming from one apartment, and worried that something criminal might be afoot, then called the police. When police arrived, they found no crime scene, but it was distress of the old couple.
“There wasn’t a crime. Jole and Michele were not victims of a scam, as can often happen to the elderly, and no burglar was in the house. There was no one in danger. This time, there was a more difficult job to see to, because there were two lonely souls to reassure. The officers managed it with simple food that contained ‘one important ingredient: humanity’,” said Roman Police. To insure that the elderly man and woman were well, police called paramedics to look them over; as they waited, an officer named Andrea checked the couple’s cupboards to gauge their food supply and decided to cook a bowl of buttered pasta and cheese for them. While Jole and Michele ate, the other officers, Alessandro, Ernesto and Mirko, kept them company and chatted casually.