Cops surprise 20-year-old raising her five younger siblings with new car

When 20-year-old Samantha Rodriguez was asked to come down to her local sheriff’s station, she had no idea what was happening.

Rodriguez, the eldest of five, had become a parental figure and primary caregiver to her younger siblings after they tragically lost both parents to cancer within years of each other.

But officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Aviation Unit (OSCO) in Orlando, Florida, didn’t summon her to the station to discuss any of her younger siblings. Instead, they had a life-changing gift for the young woman, who had taken on so much responsibility and shown much strength in the face of such incredible hardship.

When the Disney World employee arrived at the sheriff’s department, officers showed her a photo of a brand new Nissan Versa and told her, “It’s yours.”

Rodriguez and her siblings — ages 5 to 17 — clearly couldn’t contain their excitement after seeing their new ride in an emotional video posted by the sheriff’s department.

“Wow, I’m in shock, guys. Thank you guys so much, you don’t know how much this means to us and it is such a big help,” she says in the heartwarming video.

“Doing everything on my own is very hard, but I am so glad to have people like you guys in my life.”

The sheriff’s department said their idea to get the family a car came after a viral social media post about the family back in December.

They had moved to Orange County, Florida, to be with their grandmother, but money and resources were tight, so Rodriguez was forced to grow up fast. When OSCO heard about Rodriguez’s story, they invited her and her family to come to the station.

“We took pictures with the officers and the helicopter,” Rodriguez recalled.

“Then they said, ‘Let’s go into this room for milk and cookies.'”

Instead of milk and cookies, the department surprised the family with Christmas gifts. But then they decided they wanted to do more after noticing that the six siblings had arrived in an Uber.

So, when OSCO posted about the celebration on social media and scores of people contacted them asking how they could help, they banded together with the community to raise money for a car.

Rodriguez — who didn’t want her younger siblings to go into the foster care system — would ensure her brothers and sisters were taken to school and the groceries were bought by asking for rides from friends or taking Ubers.

“I knew what I had to do,” Rodriquez told CNN.

“I learned so much from my mom. I was like her sidekick. I learned what it meant to raise a family.”

Now, she said, the new car will help them try to create a new normal.

“Now that we have a car, we can go to church on Sundays like we used to. And the kids have already asked to go to the park. The possibilities are endless,” Rodriguez told Yahoo.

In addition to helping Rodriguez get new wheels, OSCO started a GoFundMe page to raise money for her family’s expenses. As of Friday morning, the page had raised $8,710 of the $25,000 goal.

“We have a great community that not only supports the OSCO but the community,” Major Deputy Jason Sams of the OSCO aviation unit told Yahoo.

“This is just everyday citizens in Orange County who were doing this.”

Rodriguez works as a server at Disney World during the day and hopes to someday enroll at Valencia College in Florida.