Efrain Chacon said he was never given any handouts in life.
Raised on the streets of Chicago, the former gang member and father of three admits that he came from the school of hard knocks.
Chacon, 39, lived a life of gangs and hustling until he moved his family to Aurora to start over. That’s when hard times hit the family, which includes wife Melissa and children Efrain Jr. 6; Elias, 4; and Briana, 16.
Almost three years ago, Chacon had surgery to correct a severe pinched nerve problem. After a second surgery, Chacon can walk with two canes, but lost his job as a contractor.
The Aurora man was down on his luck, and it wasn’t about to get any better.
Earlier this year, Chacon was driving his son Efrain to school when a police officer pulled him over for rolling through a stop sign. During the stop, the officer noticed Chacon didn’t have the proper child safety seats required by state law. Chacon was given a ticket and sent to court, where a judge ordered he have the child safety seats inspected.
In July, on his way to meet Investigator Jeff Talley at the Aurora Police Department for the inspection of the seats, Chacon was stopped again, this time for driving on a suspended license. He was booked and called Talley to reschedule his appointment.
“It was a bum deal. He’s on his way to see me and he gets pulled over again,” Talley said. So, instead of making Chacon drive once more on a suspended license, Talley offered to come to the family’s home to inspect the seats. While he was there, he and Chacon began chatting.
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Chacon told Talley about the hardships he was facing, and Talley listened.
Chacon talked about his children, and Talley listened.
Chacon spoke about his past, and Talley listened.
“People see me and they judge me,” Chacon said. “I was always brought up to think police officers were the enemy. They just wanna lock you up and take you away from your family.”
But Talley was proving him wrong, and would continue to do just that.
During the inspection, Talley realized the safety seats were expired.
“He said, ‘Will you be able to go buy some and I can come back later?'” Chacon recalled. “I told him, honestly I can’t afford it. This will kills us.”
Because of Chacon’s nerve injury, Melissa Chacon works full-time to support their family. The cash they do have is scarce, she said.
“Everywhere we’ve gone for help we’ve been rejected,” Chacon said.
Talley told Chacon that he couldn’t sign-off on the paperwork until both seats were deemed safe. Then he simply told the family he’d come back.
When he returned that evening, Talley brought two booster seats that he purchased with his own money.
It wasn’t something he could necessarily afford to do, he said.
“We were between pay periods so I called my wife to make sure we had enough to cover it in our account. She said do what you have to do,” Talley said, and so he did.
Chacon still chokes up talking about Talley’s actions.
“I almost broke down in front of him when he showed back up (with the seats),” Chacon said. “I’ve never gotten treated like that.”
And, especially not by a cop, he said.
“It’s not about what he brought, but the way he talked to me. That really meant a lot,” Chacon said.
As for Talley, the gift was a small gesture that he knew would mean a lot to the Chacon family.
Having been a part of the department’s gang unit in the past, Talley has seen men like Chacon who are struggling to get out of the gang life and start one of their own, he said.
“To me, it wasn’t about that he had been in a gang. It was parent to parent, person to person, human being to human being. That’s how I addressed him. That’s how I talked to him,” Talley said.
And, he never needed anyone to find out.
“I wasn’t thinking about how cops are negatively viewed in society right now,” Talley said of his actions that day. “This was just the right thing to do. They needed it and I was able to provide them with it. I would hope that if I was in the same situation and Efrain Chacon was an officer, he’d do the same thing.”
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