This little girl was setting up a lemonade stand because she was saving for an iPad or another tablet computer, so she could download math games and use it at school.
When a sheriff deputy passed by the lemonade stand, he couldn’t resist to go and take a look.
The deputy didn’t only buy a drink of lemonade, but he returned to her the next day to give her a huge surprise.
Lake County Deputy Zach Ropos recalls seeing the 9-year-old Gabrielle’s lemonade stand while he was on a patrol in Painesville, Ohio.
“I see a little girl come running up to my police car,” the 22-year-old deputy told ABC News. “She hands me a glass, I hand her a few bucks. I asked her what she wanted to do with the money … she said she’d get an iPad, to help with school and play games.”
The deputy then went to see the girl’s mother, because he realized that he an older generation iPad model still at his home that wasn’t really getting much use. He decided to give it to her the next day but changed his mind later.
“I went home that night, fired up the iPad, but it just wasn’t updated anymore … nothing really worked on it,” he explained.
Instead, the man would do his best to get little Gabrielle a brand new tablet that would be perfect for her needs. The deputy stepped into a consumer electronics store that willing to lower the price in order to surprise Gabrielle. A couple of days later, the sheriff deputy and Gabrielle met again.
“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,” the deputy said. “I asked her how much she saved up, and she said she only had a few dollars.”
The little girl then explained to him that she had saved some more money, but mom’s car ran out of gas. Gabrielle then gave her the money she spent so she could drive again.
“When she told me she gave the money to her mom … that’s when I almost started crying because of how great of a kid she really was,” he said.
At that moment, Zach handed her a brand new tablet.
“She just wouldn’t stop hugging me,” he recalls.
“Seeing her face is how I remember Christmas when I was 5 years old. She couldn’t stop smiling. Her smile was worth a million dollars.”
What an amazing act of kindness!
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