Stoneham Resident Plays Pizza Fairy To Andover Police

ANDOVER, MA -- It's an understatement to say that Monday was a tough day to be a police officer in Andover. Police in the storm-ravaged were expected to deal with downed power lines, a truck fire on Route 495 that kept the major highway running through town closed all afternoon and into the evening, darkened traffic lights that needed traffic details and probably more than a few calls from residents asking "When will the lights be back on?" Oh yeah, and then there's all that other police work comes up on a typical day in Andover that still needed o get done on Monday.

A Stoneham resident, who the police department has not identified, wanted to help and helped the best way he knew how: he sent 16 pizzas to the public safety building in Andover for police officers, fire fighters, and DPW workers and anyone else who needed a break and a bite on a long and trying day.

"WICKED BIG shout out to the resident from Stoneham that was kind enough to supply this evening’s responders with pizza!" the department posted on its Facebook page Tuesday morning. "We shared with everyone working and we could not be happier."

It's not clear what motivated the cheese-slice Samaritan to order a couple hundred dollars worth of pizza for emergency personnel working a few towns away. Perhaps empathy: few towns were hit harder by the wind storm Sunday night into Monday morning than Andover. In addition to more than 80% of residents losing power, dozens of roads and intersections were closed because of downed wires and fallen limbs.

The good news -- aside from the free pizza -- is that things are slowly, but surely, getting better in Andover. As of 11 am Tuesday morning, 6,823 customers were without power. That's still close to half of National Grid's 14,041 customers in Andover but significantly better than the 80% that were without power just 24 hours earlier.

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Photo by Andover Police Department.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).