WILTON — An Academy Hill School student wants a particular job for the summer: a full-time patrol position with the Wilton Police Department.
The 11-year-old, Haleigh Chase, apparently downloaded a formal department application, filled it out completely and took it to the Police Department, Chief Heidi Wilcox said Thursday.
In the application, Chase wrote that she would be available by the beginning of July or as early as the start of school vacation, Wilcox said. She prefers morning or evening work and the best time to reach her is 3:45 p.m., which is after school.
A schoolteacher and her parents were listed as references.
She also indicated she wanted to be paid $7.24 an hour.
Chase’s work experience includes math, reading and social studies, according to the application, done in pencil.
“It was all done correctly,” Wilcox said. “If only adults would turn in applications that nice.”
When Chase took it to the department, the officer on duty, Derek Daley, was impressed with how serious she was. He asked her a few questions, including what she thought she could bring to the job.
The girl quickly responded, “Awesomeness!”
She wants to train to become a police officer.
“I hope she applies again in 10 years,” Wilcox wrote on Facebook.
When Wilcox spoke to the girl’s father, Cpl. Christopher Chase of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, he said his daughter had said something about applying, but he hadn’t taken her seriously.
He heard the part about her printing the application and filling it out but didn’t realize she had actually given it to a Wilton officer, he said Thursday.
Actually, she wants to be a game warden, although that will probably change, he said.
The fact that Maine Game Warden Chris McCabe lives near her mother, Brandi Chase, and Haleigh watches his show about Maine Game Wardens, “North Woods Law,” may have influenced her, her father said.
Her mother works in a doctor’s office. Chase’s wife, Courtney, is a nurse. He keeps asking her to consider nursing. It’s safer, he said.
“She adores her family and has a real sense of pride in her country,” he said. “She’s neat and a good student. She works hard and we’re real proud of her.”
The sixth-grader and a friend take care of the school flag, properly raising it and lowering it, folding it and putting it away, he said.
“She’s lived law enforcement. All she knows is me in uniform,” he said. “She was young, but she remembers me being shot in 2005. She’s grown up with it.”
While working for the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Department, Chase and his police dog responded to a domestic incident in Winslow and he was injured.
While in school Thursday, Haleigh was unaware of how her story has spread on Facebook.
“I’ll be calling her at 3:05 p.m,” her father said.
Wilcox shared some information about the special application she received on the department’s Facebook page Wednesday night.
When she went online Thursday morning, it had 5,000 hits, the chief said. By 10 a.m., the number had climbed to nearly 8,000.
“There’s a lesson in it for me,” Wilcox said, “about the reach of Facebook and putting things out there.”
abryant@sunjournal.com
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