A group of NYPD cops brightened a homeless woman’s day with a cheeseburger meal and a “Happy Birthday” serenade.
The gift was made two weeks ago at the Staten Island Ferry, but only now is a Facebook video of “Lisa” and her five-cop chorus of well-wishers making the rounds online.
The cops are all from the NYPD’s ferry security unit. Video shows them approaching “Lisa” as she sits on a set of terminal steps on the Staten Island side, accepting her gift with a wide, partly-toothed smile.
“That’s very nice,” she says, already unwrapping the straw for her Dr. Pepper as they finish singing “Happy birthday, dear Lisa, happy birthday to you.”
“The lady in question, Lisa, she is a regular at the ferry terminal, a homeless lady, and she’s been there as long as I’ve been here,” the cop whose idea it was, Officer Leron Lee, 47, told The Post on Thursday.
“I’ve been here for seven years, and we have a bit of a rapport back and forth,” he said.
“We know her on a first-name basis. Two weeks before I was talking to her and I asked her when her birthday was, trying to find out a little bit about her, and she told me her birthday was coming up in the near future, June 21 was the date.
“So the day of her birthday I walked out the post and I saw her sitting on the staircase. I asked, ‘Lisa, happy birthday. What would you like for your birthday?’ She says, ‘I want a cheeseburger, some French fries and a Dr. Pepper.’
“So I obliged her, and what happened was, when I was walking back toward Lisa to give her the food, my co-workers saw me bringing the food and they started to razz me because they thought the food was for me. I’m on a bit of a diet.
“So I told them it’s for Lisa. So we all walked over to Lisa and started singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and that’s how it came about.”
Other officers involved are Officers Paul Lantieri, Kevin Ng, James Medina and Robert Kilduff.
“She smiled, she was happy,” Lee said of the grateful birthday gal.
“I think she was taken aback a little bit. She thanked us. It lasted no more than about a minute or so. We gave her the food, we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and that was it.”
Lee insists he really doesn’t deserve any credit. It’s pretty common for the Ferry Terminal cops to buy a cup of coffee now and then for the “resident” homeless, he noted.
“Like I said, Lisa and I have a pretty good rapport,” he explained. “So I was just trying to brighten up her birthday a little bit, for someone who really doesn’t have maybe family.”
