OH Boy, what a ride!

OH BOY, WHAT A RIDE!

Robert Vogel is a police officer in Rye, New York. One morning Officer Vogel was drinking coffee in a restaurant. He was on his coffee break. Suddenly the doors of the restaurant opened, and a man ran in. “Officer!”, the man shouted, “A car is going down the street - and a little kid is driving it!” Officer Vogel ran out of the restaurant. He saw a station wagon. It was going slowly - about twenty-five miles an hour but it wasn’t going very straight. He jumped into his police car and followed the station wagon. When he was behind it, he turned on his blue light and siren. The station wagon moved to the side of the road and stopped. Officer Vogel got out of his police car, hurried to the station wagon, and looked inside. The

driver was a little boy. His name was Rocco Morabito, and he was five years old. In the back seat was Rocco’s little sister. She was only two.

Both children were crying. “I want my Mommy!”, Rocco cried, “But she

can’t come here because I have the car”. Then Rocco had an idea. “Hey, I’ll get her,” he told Officer Vogel. “I can drive ”. “No!”, Officer Vogel said, “You stay with me!” Officer Vogel drove Rocco and his sister to the police station. Then he called their mother. Officer Vogel and Rocco’s mother had a lot of questions for Rocco. Their first question was: “Where did you get the car keys?” Rocco said, “From the top of the refrigerator.” At seven o’clock that morning Rocco’s father was at work and his mother was sleeping. Rocco saw the car keys on top of the refrigerator, climbed up on a chair, and took the keys. Rocco went to the garage and got into the car. Then he started the engine. When Rocco’s sister heard the engine, she ran to the car and began opened the back door and let her into the car. Rocco got the car out of the garage and drove away. It was 7 a.m. so there was a lot of traffic. Rocco drove one mile in heavy traffic. Then Officer Vogel stopped him. Newspapers and television stations heard about Rocco’s adventure and a lot of reporters went to his house. One reporter asked Rocco, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Rocco smiled. “I want to be a truck driver”, he said.

(1) 40 kilometres.

(2) 1.6 kilometres.