A Syracuse, New York woman found help in an unlikely place after she spent months living next to a cemetery plot she purchased for her late husband. After being married for 26 years, Rhea Holmes and her husband, Eddie, were ready to purchase their dream home in 2020. But the same day their offer was accepted by the seller, Eddie passed away.
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A grief-stricken Rhea took the money she and her husband planned to use for the down payment on their home to purchase a cemetery plot and a bench where she could sit and be with him. But life without her husband took its toll on Rhea, who lost her job and was evicted from her home during a battle with depression. With no place else to go, she decided to make a home next to the love of her life at her husband’s gravesite in May 2025.
“This is what I purchased,” she told CBS News in an interview.
Holmes, who volunteered at a local food pantry during the day, assumed she would die next to her husband’s grave until a Syracuse police officer found her and offered to help.
Officer Jamie Pastorello stepped in to help Holmes find housing, paying for a hotel room while he worked with the president of nearby LeMoyne College to set her up in campus housing while students were away on break. In addition to setting up a crowdfunding campaign, he also connected Holmes with A Tiny Home for Good, a nonprofit organization that rents affordable tiny homes to residents in Syracuse who are coming out of the shelter system.
Although she was a complete stranger, Pastorello didn’t hesitate to support Holmes’ transition to permanent housing, telling CBS News that it was “just the right thing to do.”
“I wasn’t going to let Rhea sleep outside again. A complete turnaround, you know, in 20 days, she went from sleeping on the cold, hard ground in a cemetery to her own home,” he said.
As Holmes gets back on her feet in her new home, she is grateful for Officer Pastorello’s support, calling him her “angel.”
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