MARION — The mother of a 10-year-old Marion girl who messaged police on Facebook for help with math homework says the responding officer’s engaging approach is what counts, though his math was a little off.
Molly Draper’s daughter, Lena, recently messaged Marion police about equations involving addition of numbers in parenthesis as well as multiplication.
Lt. B.J. Gruber replied. He walked the fifth-grader through correctly solving one problem but slipped up on another, suggesting addition and multiplication steps in the wrong order.
Even so, his effort drew wide praise when Draper shared the exchange on Facebook. She told a Columbus TV station that it demonstrates her daughter’s trust in police officers and good community relationship-building on their part.
Gruber took the math misstep in stride, joking that he should’ve mentioned his favorite subject was history.