"I Hope These Fit You" — The NYPD Officer Who Knelt to Give a Barefoot Homeless Man New Boots: The Story of Larry DePrimo
On a freezing November night in 2012, a young NYPD officer spent $75 of his own money on insulated boots and knelt on the sidewalk to put them on a barefoot homeless man near Times Square. A tourist's photograph of that quiet act of kindness went viral, touching millions of hearts around the world.
A Barefoot Man on a Frozen Sidewalk
November 14, 2012. The temperature in Manhattan had plunged well below freezing, and a bitter wind cut through the canyons of midtown. Near Times Square, thousands of New Yorkers and tourists hurried past with their collars turned up, their eyes fixed straight ahead.
Sitting on the sidewalk, invisible to nearly all of them, was a man with no shoes, no socks — nothing between his bare, blistered feet and the frozen concrete.
Most people walked past without a glance. One person stopped.
His name was Larry DePrimo, a 25-year-old NYPD patrol officer assigned to counter-terrorism duty that night.
"The Warmest Boots You've Got"
DePrimo noticed the man's feet — cracked, swollen, covered in blisters. He didn't call for backup. He didn't file a report. He walked straight into a nearby Skechers shoe store and asked the clerk for the warmest, most waterproof pair of boots they carried.
He pulled $75 from his own wallet — no small amount for a rookie officer — and bought a pair of all-weather boots and a thick pair of thermal socks.
Then he went back to the homeless man, knelt on the cold pavement, and carefully put the socks and boots on the man's feet himself. He didn't pose. He didn't announce what he was doing. He simply treated another human being the way you'd treat family.
A Tourist's Photograph Changes Everything
What DePrimo didn't know was that someone was watching. Jennifer Foster, a tourist visiting from Florence, Arizona, happened to witness the scene from across the street. She captured the moment on her phone: a uniformed officer on his knees, gently pulling a boot onto a homeless man's foot, the glow of Times Square behind them.
Foster was so moved that she sent the photo to the NYPD's official Facebook page. On November 27, 2012, the department posted the image with a brief caption.
The response was unlike anything they had ever seen.
Within 24 hours, the photo had garnered more than 1.6 million "likes" — at the time, one of the fastest-spreading images in Facebook's history. CNN, ABC, NBC, the BBC, The New York Times, and media outlets across the globe picked up the story. Headlines dubbed DePrimo "New York's Kindest Cop."
"I Just Did What Anyone Would Do"
Overnight, the young officer became a national figure. In interviews, he was characteristically humble:
"I'm not a hero. I just saw someone who was cold and I could help. I think anyone would have done the same thing."
But the reality contradicted his modesty. Thousands of people had walked past that barefoot man. Only one stopped.
DePrimo later revealed a small detail that made the story even more personal. The store clerk, upon learning that the boots were for a homeless man, had given the officer the maximum discount she could. One small kindness had sparked another.
He also shared that he kept the receipt tucked inside his bulletproof vest and carried it with him on every shift.
"That receipt reminds me why I became a cop."
The Complicated Aftermath
Reporters eventually identified the man in the photograph as Jeffrey Hillman, a veteran who had been living on the streets. A few days after the story broke, Hillman was spotted barefoot again. He told a reporter that he had hidden the boots because he was afraid they would be stolen — or that someone might harm him for them.
The revelation was jarring for many who had shared the heartwarming image, but it underscored a crucial truth: homelessness is not solved by a single pair of boots. It is a complex crisis rooted in mental health challenges, systemic poverty, and a lack of long-term support.
Yet even in this complicated reality, DePrimo's gesture was not diminished. If anything, the follow-up story deepened the public conversation. Donations to homeless shelters across New York surged. Spontaneous "warm boots drives" sprang up in cities nationwide. Lawmakers cited the photograph in discussions about expanding services for the homeless.
The Ripple Effect
DePrimo received several commendations and civic awards for his actions, but he consistently redirected attention away from himself. He continued to serve as a patrol officer, and in later interviews, he spoke about how the experience had reinforced his belief in the power of small, immediate acts of compassion.
The photograph endures as one of the defining images of 2012 — not because it showed something extraordinary, but because it showed something painfully ordinary that almost no one was doing: stopping for a stranger in pain.
What It Means to Kneel
There are moments in life that call us to our knees. Not in defeat, but in service. Larry DePrimo didn't calculate the cost, the optics, or the career implications. He saw bare feet on frozen ground, and he acted.
A $75 pair of boots. A young officer on his knees on a cold sidewalk. A tourist's snapshot.
That was all it took to remind millions of people of something they already knew but had, perhaps, forgotten: that the measure of a society is not in its skyline or its stock market, but in whether someone stops when another person is cold.
"The receipt is still in my vest."
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