Summer is off to a pretty sweet start for one girl.
Gabrielle Garcar, an elementary school student in Ohio, was selling lemonade to earn money to buy a new electronic tablet, when a local police officer surprised her with the device. Sheriff's Deputy Zach Ropos was so impressed with the 9-year-old's work ethic that he decided to give her the tablet himself, ABC News reported.
Ropos, an officer in Lake County, Ohio, stopped by Gabrielle’s stand on Monday. After paying $3 for a 50-cent cup of lemonade, he learned what she planned to do with the money, but knew it might be difficult for her to reach her goal.
"I talked to the little girl, gave her a speech about how courageous and admirable I think her efforts were to save up her money," Ropos told ABC News. "I asked her how much she saved up, and she said she only had a few dollars."
Ropos was moved when Gabrielle told him she had given a portion of her earnings to help fill her mom’s gas tank. He told Gabrielle’s mother, Melissa Garcar, that he had an old iPad that he could give to her daughter. But when he returned home, he found the device no longer worked, so he went to Best Buy and bought the 9-year-old a new tablet.
Yesterday Deputy Zach Ropos was on patrol yesterday and stopped by a little girl’s lemonade stand to make a purchase. ...
Posted by Lake County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The officer presented the tablet to Gabrielle on Tuesday, and a photo of the sweet moment was posted to the police department’s Facebook page. The photo received more than 130,000 likes and has been shared over 30,000 times. Though the post has gone viral, Ropos has kept the attention on Gabrielle.
"I really didn't want all the media attention,” he told Today.com. “I just wanted to see the smile on a little girl's face and that was worth a million dollars to me, so that's why I did it."
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