'Bye daddy! We love you daddy!' shouted Austin, 2, and Rileigh Buetow, 4.
Two kids screaming their heads off got a little help from a friendly cop, who lent them his patrol car’s microphone for a little extra volume.
Rileigh Buetow, 4, and her little brother Austin, 2, were jumping up and down, shouting, “Bye, daddy! We love you, daddy!” as their Navy father’s aircraft carrier pumped out to sea.
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San Diego Police Officer James Weaver had stopped his cruiser to take in the majestic sight of the USS Carl Vinson heading west, when he saw the two little ones hopping near the water.
“I figured I’d give them a chance to be heard,” he told InsideEdition.com Monday evening.
What made him think of his car’s P.A. system?
When he visits local schools, he said, "That’s the thing [kids] love the most. They love to talk on the mike and they love to hear the sounds of their voices."
Rileigh stepped right up and blasted her lungs out. “Bye, daddy!” The amplification was so intense her brother, Austin, was startled into silence.
"He just shook his head, like 'I’m not going to say anything,'" his mother, Brettany, recalled. "It was really loud."
Brettany had been holding it together pretty well as the family geared up to say goodbye to Joshua Buetow last week before he set sail on a mission to the western Pacific that is expected to last until summer.
But the kindness of Officer Weaver and her excited children pushed her over the edge, she said.
"I started crying," she said. "This is our first deployment, so we’ve never been through this before."
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She says her husband didn’t hear the cruiser’s P.A. system, given the distance and the roar of the ship’s engines. But they haven’t had an opportunity to talk about it in-depth.
She posted a couple of photos of Rileigh, Austin, and 2-month-old Ryder (who can’t say much of anything yet), seeing their father off.
The images went viral, naturally. Her mother asked why she didn’t take video of the impromptu police involvement.
Brettany laughed. She was lucky to have the presence of mind to snap some photos — what with her crying, the kids screaming, and a kind police officer handing over his microphone.
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