An Illinois sheriff’s office has celebrated the arrival of ten new babies into the world in just seven months, born to its staff members, with an adorable photoshoot.
Sheriff Brian VanVickle of Ogle County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, Northern Illinois, told The Epoch Times: “We’re actually a very small rural agency. I have a total of 14 patrol deputies and 78 employees altogether, so having ten babies over a short amount of time is something that we’ve never experienced, and just something that we wanted to celebrate with the families.”
Limited by what they could do due to the harsh winter weather, the sheriff’s office invited the parents and their babies to a training room and indoor facility at their on-site jail in mid-January to take photos.
“That was part of the struggle, just trying to get ten newborns and parents and everybody else all in one place at the same time!” VanVickle said.
The idea to do the photoshoot came from chief Danielle Hardesty since she loves taking photos. However, the sheriff’s office hired a professional photographer to snap the pictures. The babies—including a set of twins—were between one and ten months old at the time of the shoot. All the parents were enthusiastic. “It didn’t take any convincing at all,” VanVickle said.
The proud parents were patrol deputies Kyle White, Sam Gendusa, Zac Hare, and Zachary Lessman, Taylor Burke and Samantha Crawford from dispatch, Alec Ketter from corrections, and Garrett Koch and Jessica Reed from maintenance.
“We have some [pictures] where the babies are making great faces, and the dads are making faces trying to get the kids to look at the camera ... it’s fun to be able to have that experience for those young men and women who serve the community, to be able to bring their family into a job that they obviously love,” said VanVickle, who never expected the baby photoshoot to go viral.
“We certainly didn’t expect the number of views on Facebook that we’ve got ... for a county of less than 55,000 to have 2 million views on their Facebook page is not very common for us!” he told The Epoch Times.
Since VanVickle became an elected sheriff in 2014, he has seen a lot of changes, including a number of retirements and new hires. For the sheriff, celebrating his department’s ten newest arrivals is a chance to celebrate the men and women who serve and protect, as well as demonstrate to the community that deputies are just like them.
When VanVickle was president of the Sheriffs’ Association, he started a community outreach initiative, “Humanizing the Badge,” to prove to the outside world that law enforcement personnel are just like everybody else in the community.
“[They] eat at the same restaurants, their kids go to the same schools, and we’re really part of the community,” VanVickle said.
