TAMPA, FL -- Maylin Serrano still wears the engagement ring he gave her.
“Sometimes I reach and he's not there,” Maylin said. Detective Juan Serrano is the one Maylin reaches for in bed.
He doesn’t walk in the front door, or call anymore.
Serrano died in a crash while on duty as a Tampa Police Officer February 25th, 2005. He was Mayor Pam Iorio’s bodyguard and Serrano had just dropped of the mayor and was driving home when a drunk driver slammed into him.
The tragedy catapulted Maylin into a club of women who paid the highest dues.
“We are here because our husbands died in the line of duty, the bottom line.” she said.
Because of their loss, widows are supposed to get free health care for life or until they remarry, but on November 12th Maylin opened a letter.
The cities risk manager, Michael Laperche sent it to the families of Detective Randy Bell, Corporal Mike Roberts, and Maylin. It said they will have to pay $337 dollars or more a month just to get the health care they've had for free for years
“For the city to do this to us, this was harsh,” Maylin said.
Maylin wasn’t going to say anything, but the letter made it to the media.
Then an unhappy-Mayor Pam Iorio made a phone call.
“She said ‘I never, never, agreed to this. It went out without my concern without my permission,’” Maylin told us.
The mayor sent us a statement saying:
"Regardless of what a staff person from the city has said or communicated to the widows of fallen officers, I can assure you that there will be no cut whatsoever in the health benefits paid to widows of our fallen officers. I would never agree to a change in any benefits being paid to widows or survivors of our fallen officers,” Iorio said in a news release.
And Maylin can't complain.
“I'm grateful, because you have to be.”
