By Lauren Pack
Dayton Daily News, Ohio
HAMILTON — It was a cold, snowy morning to have your motorized wheelchair get a dead battery, but a Hamilton police officer came to the aid of a resident and pushed the man’s wheelchair a quarter mile in the snow.
Hamilton Officer Mike Thacker pulled up to the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Sycamore Street at about 10:30 a.m. today and saw a man stuck in a wheelchair with a dead battery. He stopped his cruiser and started pushing.
“He was going to the garage to power up,” Thacker said. “I thought it was just around the corner, but he meant the county garage.”
So Thacker started pushing, wearing a hat, but no gloves or coat.
“I haven’t worn a coat at all this winter, I wear lots of thermal. I don’t get cold,” Thacker told the Journal-News.
The officer who joined the force in 2009 pushed the man into the Government Services Center lobby so he could warm up and recharge his wheelchair’s battery.
Appreciative residents, including Betty Barry, took photos and video of the helpful officer.
“All cops aren’t bad,” Barry said in her Facebook post.
https://www.facebook.com/HamiltonOhioPD/posts/1343801362326382
“The guy needed a push and I pushed him. It was no big deal,” Thacker said. “I would have pushed him if I had been in my police car or off duty. He needed help.”
The police officer himself got help when a fellow officer picked up Thacker and drove him back to his cruiser.
“No I didn’t have to walk back,” he said with a laugh.
___
(c)2017 Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC