MANSFIELD — It took just one moment to make a child’s day.
After helping a friend with their car, Megan Dell and her family decided to spend their dinner at Wendy’s on Lexington Avenue.
“When we pulled in, we saw a cruiser,” she said. “We didn’t think too much of it.”
Soon, her son, Johnathan 9, was playing with his father in line.
His father pointed to the police eating and said, “If you don’t quiet down, those guys will get you into trouble,” Dell recalled.
Mansfield Police officer Mark Boggs overheard that conversation and walked up to the family at the cash register.
“I saw the dad talking to the kid, they were joking around and I saw him pointing at us and saying, ‘I’ll tell them on you,'” Boggs said. “I got up. I had a pocket full of stickers and said, ‘Hey, what was that about?'”
Johnathan looked scared, Boggs and Dell said.
“He politely got down to my son’s level and asked are you old enough for a sticker?” Dell said.
Boggs gave Jonathan a Mansfield Junior Officer sticker.
“He absolutely adored the fact that he got a sticker,” Dell said. “He wore it to bed. He not only kept the sticker, but still kept the paper. He told me, ‘I want to keep this.'”
Johnathan is autistic, Dell said in a Facebook post thanking the officer for the happiness he gave to her son. This instant, she said, made her son love police.
“It means a lot for people with autism that our police are there to help, not hinder,” Dell said. “That officer didn’t know he was autistic because we didn’t tell him and he was so kind and caring.”
This was not the first time Boggs’ good deeds were noticed. In the stream of comments on Dell’s Facebook post was another moment he was involved in.
“I was scrolling through the comments about it,” Boggs said. “It was nice to see the way people think about police officers. There was actually someone who said something about an officer who put his lights on for a kid in a wagon. That was me. It’s just nice to hear the community appreciates it.”
Being able to bring a positive impact to the community is something Boggs said makes his job fulfilling.
“I’m new. I just started in November of last year,” Boggs said. “I really enjoy every day. You get to help people in so many ways.”
