The saying "it's the thought that counts" really took meaning for one Marion, Ohio police officer when a 10-year-old girl messaged the police department's Facebook page for help with her math homework. 

  • Marion police help 10-year-old girl with math homework
  • Officer praised for efforts despite getting one problem wrong

The girl's mother, Molly Draper, said her daughter Lena messaged Marion police about equations involving addition of numbers in parenthesis as well as multiplication. 

Lt. B.J. Gruber responded to Lena, walking the fifth-grader through correctly solving one problem, but slipped up on another. 

Although Lt. Gruber got one problem wrong, Molly still praised his efforts to help his daughter, saying it demonstrates her daughter's trust in police officers and good community relationship-building on their part. 

Lt. Gruber wrote on the police department's Facebook page saying, "We do aim to be a full service police department after all." Adding, "Maybe [I] should have mentioned that History was my favorite subject before answering." 

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.