QUEENS — James Roberts is on a mission: to track down the police officer he credits with helping him land a much-needed job, and to take him out to lunch.
The 58-year-old Bronx resident is searching for the officer who gave him a ride to a job interview in Queens last month, after he'd mistakenly shown up at the wrong address and didn't have enough bus fare to get to the right place.
"I never thought I would meet one as nice as him," Roberts said of the officer. "I call him super cop, because he saved my day."
Roberts said he met the officer on Dec. 7, when he was on his way to a job interview with a rental car company that was set up through America Works, an organization that helps "hard-to-place" workers find jobs by offering training and other services.
Roberts had been out of work for several years, hampered in the job market by his criminal background, which included a drug charge in 2000 — something he said made applying for jobs "excruciating."
"Every place I went, that’s all they kept throwing in my face is my past," he said. "Instead of saying, 'Well, he did all that and he's trying to get a job, maybe he's changed' — they don’t think like that.”
He entered a program with America Works in November. The company set him up with a job interview, helped him prep for it and gave him a round-trip MetroCard to get him there.
But when the big day came, Roberts mistakenly took the bus to LaGuardia Airport — where the car rental company is located — when he was actually supposed to be at the office of a hiring company in Fresh Meadows.
Without enough money on his MetroCard to make it to his interview and back home again, he called his America Works' caseworker in a panic, worried he was going to miss his appointment.
"I'm crying because I want this job. I know I’m going to get this job if I get there," he recalled.
That's when a police officer in a marked car nearby noticed how upset Roberts was, he said, and asked him what was wrong. He started asking the officer for directions, but was surprised to get a different offer — a ride to his interview.
"He said, 'I got you,'" Roberts said, saying the two chatted in the car along the way. "He started talking, and I could hear it: this is what he does. He likes helping people.”
When he got to his destination, Roberts said he promised the officer he'd treat him to lunch if he got the job. He started work parking rental cars at the airport just a few days later.
Since then, he's been on the lookout for the man who helped him out.
Though the officer told him his name, Roberts can't remember it in full (he thinks the last name may have been "Andrews.") He's pretty sure the man worked with the NYPD, though it's possible he was a Port Authority Police officer, he said.
Roberts described the man as bald, standing roughly 6-foot-1 and in his 30s or 40s. Staff at America Works reached out to the two local NYPD precincts that border the airport, the 114th and the 115th, but have yet to locate the officer.
"What he did was so above and beyond," America Works CEO Dr. Lee Bowes said. "It made such a difference in this man's life."
Roberts says he loves his new job, and he's hoping he'll be able to thank the officer in person — and buy him lunch, as promised.
"I'll never forget him," he said. "I look for this guy every day I come to work. Every time I walk out here to go to lunch, I look for him. Every time I see a police car by the bus stop right there, I go look.”
