5th grader named "Sheriff for the Day" in Rensselaer County

RENSSELAER COUNTY, N.Y. (NEWS10) - The Rensselaer County Sheriff's Office held a ceremony on Friday to swear in the student selected as the "Sheriff for the day," after the sheriff`s office recently held a contest with schools in the county.

The Rensselaer County Sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, worked with the student resource officers at seven schools in the county to hold a contest for 5th graders in the region. Students interested in the competition, were tasked with writing and submitting an essay about what public safety means to them. The winner of the contest got to be named "Sheriff for the Day," and spend the day with the sheriff after being sworn in.

The winner, Mallory Rowland, is a 5th grader at Tamarac Elementary School. Sheriff Bourgault said he received 50 entries, but Mallory's essay stood out to him above all the other submissions.

"She did a great essay. The last line was definitely the selling point for me though," Sheriff Bourgault said. "It was up in the air between four or five of them, including her and that last line about so what can you do for public safety and help your community that really sold it for me."

At the end of her essay, Mallory wrote that she hopes that others in the community feel the same as her and act in ways that make the community safer.

Mallory said she was up for the challenge of being sheriff for the day and was excited to have won the competition.

"I wanted to try and challenge myself," Mallory said. "I thought it would just be a little fun thing to do."

Mallory's mom, Jodi LaCoppola, said she is very proud of her daughter because she knows how much work Mallory put into her essay.

"She worked on it pretty much the whole two or three weeks she had," LaCoppola said. "She made a lot of revisions actually I think today was the first day that I actually had seen the final copy because she had done it so many times. And then the last time she had done it late at night, and put it in her bag to go to school, so I never even got to hear the final copy."

Sheriff Bourgault said he plans on continuing the contest next year.