The family of a retired Tampa Police officer battling cancer celebrated a small victory Wednesday afternoon.

Jose Feliciano made the trip on an air ambulance from Puerto Rico to Tampa.

He was battling gastric cancer in Puerto Rico. But his family didn’t think he was getting the help he needed.

“The hospitals over there, it was just a runaround. You would hear one thing from one physician and another thing from another physician. Lots of contradictions, lots of unknowns. It was frustrating everybody,” said his niece Elizabeth Castro.

Feliciano was a Tampa police detective for 26 years before retiring. So when the family reached out to his former partner, Anthony Tyson and other officers, they came up with a plan.

A GoFundMe page was started and after just a few days the family raised the $30,000 they needed to bring him back to the states.

“I was devastated. I can’t imagine something so horrible happening to someone so good. And to hear that he had this disease, I knew it was a bad disease and my heart bled for him,” Tyson said.

Tyson, a police escort and Feliciano’s family greeted him when he arrived by air ambulance.

“He’s the guy that’s the strong force of our family,” said his sister Madelyn Castro. “So this is tough and to know him, to know the way he is, and to see him going through this, it’s very hard to take.”

Jose’s nephew Alex Castro is now an officer at TPD and wears his uncle’s old badge number to show how much he loves him and plans to help him fight this disease.

“He is an amazing man. He’s done so much for our community and he’s done so much for my family. And he’s the glue that holds my family together,” Castro said. “And without him, we wouldn’t be as close as we are today and to even think of a world or a time without him is not a reality to me yet.”

Jose Feliciano will go to Moffitt Cancer Center to undergo treatment. The family plans to keep everyone updated with his condition on their GoFundMe page. 

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