Marilyn “Mary” Mayo needs financial help.

Paralyzed from the waist down last year when a lightening bolt struck a tree that crushed her car during a funeral procession, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office deputy can’t do everyday tasks on her own. She shells out hefty sums for home health nurses to help her put on her own pants, reach into the sink and even use the restroom.

The bills are piling up, she said.

Two scholarships were presented by the St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office in memory of four officers killed in the line of duty. The awards are given to the children of members of the St. Tammany Parish Deputy'€™s Association. Pictured are, from left: Lt. Rick Crockett, Annette Crockett, Claudia Brown, Laney Brown, and Lt. Randy Smith, president of the St. Tammany Parish Deputy'€™s Association. (Staff Photo by Anne Lautzenheiser)

“Financially, I can’t even begin to tell you how different and how much more expensive it is to do day-to-day things,” Mayo said.

That could change.

Flanked in Washington D.C. by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and U.S. House Rep. Don Cazayoux, D-La., Mayo on Wednesday helped introduce those congressmans’ proposed laws to give financial aid to deputies like Mayo. The bills, not yet filed, should be introduced in coming weeks as a way to help injured officers and family members of those slain in the line of duty, a Landrieu aid said.

The Landrieu-Cazayoux First Responder’s Support Act seeks to increase lifetime disability benefits from $300,000 to $350,000 and offer a $7,500 tax credit for health care, home health care, nursing and other medical benefits. In addition, the bill, if approved, would nearly double the current monthly education benefits for family members of a slain officer to $881 monthly $1,500.

“We need to do more than snap pictures and stand in honor ceremonies,” Landrieu said. “We need, as members of Congress, to step up and offer real substantive initiatives.”

The bills announcement falls during Police Week 2008 in which 358 law enforcement officers nationwide, 10 of which from Louisiana, including St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Linden “Beau” Raimer and Deputy First Class Hilery Mayo, died last year. Their names will be permanently affixed to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Raimer, who was engaged to Mayo, died when the snapped tree crushed the couple’s Sheriff’s Office cruiser June 13, 2007. Mayo lay in a coma for weeks, escaping alive but paralyzed. The pair was attending the funeral procession of Hilery Mayo, another St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office deputy killed en route to a fake 911 call. Neither Mayo is related.

Their story is just one such tragedy that all too often befalls Louisiana law enforcement officers, 118 of which are already memorialized on the D.C. area wall. Even worse, however, are the family members left to pick up the pieces, said David Carter, a sargeant with the New Orleans Police Department.

Carter, shot four times at point blank range in the line of duty, barely survived. He lay in a hospital bed for a month and a half before opening his eyes. His first thought lay with his family.

“Every day when we go to work, we realize that might be the day,” said Carter, a guest speaker at the event. “We don’t want to think about it, but we also would like to know if something happened to us our families would be taken care of. It was comforting to know the department was taking care of my family when I woke up.”

Others’ aren’t so lucky, Landrieu said.

Law enforcement officers “put themselves in harm’s way each day so that the rest of us may live safely and peacefully in a free society,” Landrieu said. “There is no group more deserving of our full support, and the truth is, our federal government has not done enough to care for and honor these officers, their families and their sacrifice.”

Mayo agrees.

Even after months of physical therapy in Atlanta and returning to her post as a dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Office, her world is shaken. Her normalcy is gone. She relies on nursing aids, friends and family members to do day to day chores, and her ”arms now have to be her arms and her legs,” an adjustment she’s still getting used to, she said. To top it off, medical bills are mounting while financial relief is dwindling, she said

The bill “would ease some of the challenges that I have go through now,” she said. “Life is completely different, and financially (the bills, if approved,) would help me get around day to day in my own house.”