OTTAWA COUNTY (WHTC-AM/FM) — Ottawa County Sheriff’s officials took time this week to boost a Hudsonville resident Peyton Porter’s day.
Porter attends at Hudsonville elementary school and dreams of becoming a police officer. He has a medical condition, retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder which destroys the eye’s ability to disern light, eventually causing blindness.
For every single Halloween, Peyton has dressed up as a policeman, Kempker said, in an email to media, adding that he and the deputies were moved by the boy’s story.
Kempker made Peyton deputy for a day on Thursday, June 6, 2019, but police did much more.
First, Deputy AJ Rietberg surprised Peyton, telling him his services were needed, then whisking him away in a squad car for a pizza lunch at the Jamestown Township Fire Department. He toured the the Sheriff’s Office gun range and joined the K9 Unit for an exercise in locating banned substances and tracking a suspect. Then, they went to a SWAT-team drill in which Peyton helped arrest a purse snatching suspect at the Sheriff’s headquarters’ parking lot.
“If this fails to move you, then you may want to check your pulse,” Kempker said.
