Editor's Note: this town was previously featured on WS as one of the finalists for the Top 10 Nicest Places in America competition from Reader's Digest.

Cancer is not going to keep this dedicated police officer from doing the job he loves – and his community is not about to let his job keep him from getting cancer treatments, either.

Chris Kudla was diagnosed with a rare form of stage four kidney cancer back in November 2017, the day before his 46th birthday.

It was also eight months after he had started working for the Riverside Police Department in Illinois.

Despite having to attend doctor's appointments and chemotherapy sessions twice a month, Kudla told his police chief that he did not want to stop working – and the chief told him that they would try to make it work.

The primary problem was that Kudla had not worked at the police department long enough to accumulate enough sick days for his treatment. So as a means of helping their police brother, the other officers at the department donated all of their sick days to Kudla.

Then, municipality workers, local civil servants, and city staff members all joined together in donating their sick days to Kudla.

To date, he has received roughly 6 months worth of sick days.

Additionally, the police department started raising money to support Kudla's family through a GoFundMe campaign. Over the course of seven months, it has raised $41,000.

"Everybody without hesitation stepped up to help out," Kudla told CBS News. "Sometimes when you start to lose faith in humanity and you think that this world's gone down the wrong path and there ain't no coming back, something like this happens."

(WATCH the interview below or our international viewers can watch the video on the CBS News website)

Share The Inspiring Community Story With Your Friends – Photo by Riverside Police Department