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Doctor Pays Patient's Ticket In Case Of Vomiting Tot

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Gina Boyd was given a traffic ticket Tuesday for an illegal u-turn she made to help daughter Emily, 3, who was vomiting in the back seat.

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 30, 2008

Updated: 01/31/2008 01:44 pm

TAMPA - A mom who was issued a citation for making an illegal U-turn to pull over because of her vomiting toddler received a happy surprise today: The doctor who treated her daughter offered to pay the ticket.

"That is so sweet," Gina Boyd said.

Boyd, 27, of Temple Terrace, received a $123 citation from a Hillsborough County deputy on Monday after she made an improper U-turn on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard at the Fletcher Avenue intersection. Her 3-year-old daughter, Emily, had begun vomiting and making choking noises on the way to a walk-in clinic, and she hastened to pull over, she said.

Deputy Jon Tillis cited her for the improper turn. Deputies have discretion about whether to issue citations, the sheriff's office said.

According to the sheriff's office, Boyd said her child was fine and said there was no emergency when the deputy stopped her. Boyd disputed this account, saying that the deputy told her she could have called an ambulance had there been an emergency.

Enter Steve Dickey, a general practitioner who operates the Doctor's Walk-In Clinic on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, where Emily was diagnosed with the flu.

Dickey said in an interview today that he remembered the child and her upset mother. Upon reading about the citation in the media, "I thought, 'Get on the phone and make things right.'"

He reached out to Boyd through a reporter and offered to pay the citation. She accepted.

Boyd said she tried to decline but Dickey insisted.

Dickey said he thought "that's the least we can do" for the mother of three children whose husband is serving in Iraq with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"She was a very nice lady," he said, adding that he thought the citation was "ridiculous."

"Where's compassion in this day and age?" Dickey said. "Maybe the officer was having a bad day."

Boyd said she does not want to file a formal complaint with the sheriff's office about the citation because she knows the turn was improper. She just wishes "he could've showed me some discretion" and taken the circumstances into account, she said.

"He is a person. He did his job," she said.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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