By Police1 Staff
SYRNA, Ga. — A police officer in metro Atlanta used her hobby to help throw a surprise party for a local boy with cerebral palsy.
CNN reports Lt. Brandy Forman of the Smyrna Police Department volunteers with Icing Smiles, a nonprofit whose volunteers bake custom cakes for families with sick children. Through the organization, she learned about Tye Clinner, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was born and is unable to walk or sit up on his own.
When Forman heard Tye’s story, she knew she wanted to do something special for him and his mother. She told CNN she saw an “opportunity to do something good,” and wanted to go above and beyond just baking the boy a cake.
“It was an opportunity to make something small into something big for him that he wouldn’t always have the opportunity for,” she said.
Forman and the Smyrna Police Department coordinated a surprise 13th birthday party for Tye that included pizza, wings and his own officer shirt. It also doubled as a send-off party for the Clinners, who took off Monday on a trip to Disney World sponsored by Give Kids the World, an organization that gives dream vacations to children with life-threatening and terminal illnesses.
The theme of the event was Disney and pirates, two of Tye’s favorite things, according to the report. Forman crafted a three-tier cake with a pirate map wrapped around one layer, treasure coins perched on another, and a set of Mickey Mouse ears on the top.
The police department shared information about the party on social media and opened it up for the community to attend. The news traveled to neighboring police departments, Dunwoody and Duluth, that brought their police vehicles for the children to check out.
“We have to find alternative ways in connecting with the people that we serve,” Smyrna Community Relations Sergeant Louis Defense told CNN. “If not, we are failing our community and that’s not what we are trying to do.”