The Largo Police Department is going above and beyond the call of duty.

Rob Bachman, a tattoo artist at Legacy Blue Tattoo Studio in Tarpon Springs, agreed to tattoo his cousin and her husband after they tragically lost their 6-year-old son, Jakob.

  • NY parents traveled to Florida for handprint tattoos
  • Largo Police Sgt. Anna Starling helped retrieve the prints
  • The parents both got the tattoo, which reads 'your wings were ready, but my heart was not'

"She said, 'The only thing I have is this set of handprints he put on my mirror the morning he passed away,'” Bachman recalled.

Bachman’s family, who is from Buffalo, New York, drove down to Florida with the mirror in the car. But Bachman wasn’t sure how to get the handprints off the mirror.

So he called Sgt. Ann Starling at the Largo Police Department.

"How can anyone say no?” Starling, who works as a traffic homicide investigator, said. “It was such a moving story and it was not exactly what I do now, but I still have the skills so how could I not do it for them?"

Starling met the family at the police station on a Saturday — her day off — and got to work. She was able to lift multiple copies of the handprints off the mirror.

"Cars, houses, windows, you name it, we’ve done it,” Starling said. “But this was probably the most important set of prints I have ever pulled in my entire life."

Bachman then used the prints for the tattoos. Jakob’s dad got one handprint tattooed on his shoulder and his mom got the other on her leg. Both tattoos also say, “Your wings were ready, but my heart was not.”

"There would have been no way to be able to do that tattoo and make it perfect, realistic, there would have been no way to do it without those prints,” Bachman said.

Jakob’s parents say they appreciate Sgt. Starling and Bachman for making it all happen.