A Wisconsin sheriff's office is used to responding to emergency requests, but one of the deputy sheriffs for the Shawano County Sheriff's Office fielded an unexpected call recently from a 10-year-old child, who called in to ask for help on their math homework.
Shawano County Sheriff George Lenzner told "Good Morning America" the child reached longtime dispatcher Kim Krause when they dialed 911 on Nov. 15, and after informing the child the emergency line isn't for homework help, offered to assist nonetheless.
"Hey, it's not really an emergency. I just need help on one math problem with my homework. It's like eight-grade level. I'm sorry to waste your time," the child said in a clip of the 911 call released by the Shawano County Sheriff's Office on Nov. 22.
"Oh, well, I'm not very good at math, sweetie, but I can try. What is it?" Krause responded.
The child then told Krause the problem -- "Dividing a number by 10 is the same as finding one-tenth of the number. Use the phrase 'one-tenth of' or the phrase 'ten times' to complete each statement about 1,000."
After hearing the problem, Krause told the child, "Oh, I'm afraid I'm no good at that."
Lenzner said although the Shawano County Sheriff's Office, which serves about 42,000 residents in a mostly rural area about 40 miles west of Green Bay, tends to be busy, Krause offered to check to see if someone was available to help the child at home and Deputy Sheriff Chase Mason happened to be available and in the right place at the right time.
"[This] isn't something we really normally do, but he wasn't busy at the time, and he was in the area, so he stopped by," Lenzner explained. "[Mason] has a stepson that's about the same age … and so he sat down and helped [the child] with [their] math."
"It just worked out good that day," he added.
The sheriff's office posted about the unusual call on its Facebook page Tuesday.
Lenzner said he's "proud" of Mason for stepping in and added that deputies and staff occasionally help others in the community, even for non-emergency situations such as shoveling snow out of a neighbor's driveway or helping to install a new mailbox.
"Cops are there to help people and especially the youth," Lenzner said. "I don't want our youth to ever be afraid of law enforcement. I want them to continue knowing that law enforcement is there to help them."
