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Social media reveals West Palm Beach police officer's random act of kindness

Posted at 7:03 PM, Aug 31, 2016
and last updated 2016-09-01 04:17:23-04

A Twitter post revealed a West Palm Beach police officer's random act of kindness.

On Tuesday morning, Olivia Liggio was running late to work while driving along Australian Avenue.

"I was off to a rough start, locked my keys in my apartment -- both my car and my apartment keys -- so I was running a little bit late," Liggio said.

She said she was behind a school bus on Australian Avenue when she saw two boys running towards the bus. But she said they missed it by a minute.

"They seemed so upset that they were going to be late to school," she said.

That's when she saw Officer Sarah Burgoon with the West Palm Beach Police Department.

"We get so involved in the hustle and bustle of our day lives so it was nice to see this police officer help these kids get to school on time," Liggio said.

Burgoon also spotted the kids running towards the bus. She said it was raining at the time and she figured they missed the bus.

"I made a U-turn and asked if they needed a ride and they were very happy and jumped in my car," Burgoon said.

Liggio wanted to make others aware of what Burgoon did, so she wrote about it on Twitter.

"Social media is such a strong and powerful tool that I thought by tweeting it would put a smile on a bunch of other people's faces and it got some re-tweets so I think it did its job."

Burgoon said she was surprised to get any attention for what she did because she's done it many times before.

"What I did yesterday, I've done multiple times. Just yesterday, somebody happened to see it. I don't know what part of me did it -- whether it's because I'm a mom or a cop -- but I think we all need to help each other more," Burgoon said.

Burgoon hopes people will realize that police can create some good while also responding to the bad.

"Sometimes we have to do things that they don't like, obviously, but at the end of the day we are someone that they can reach out to and ask for help and I think that building relations with even the younger population is always a step in the right direction," she said.