All too often, the mainstream media report negative or unflattering stories about the hardworking police in America — the very people who put their lives on the line day in and day out across this country.

Here’s a story that instead shares some good news about the work done by our police officers.

Close

It’s the kind of story that happens all the time. We need to acknowledge the good, unselfish and extraordinary work of our uniformed police.

Katherine Lam at Fox News reported the story about an Indiana police officer who “jumped into action” to save a young child who was recently choking on an apple at a Chick-fil-A:

Hobart Police Officer Richard Mayer was dining at the fast-food restaurant in Merrillville with a few of his colleagues when Melanie Hasse ran to him for help, WLS reported. Hasse told the news station her daughter Charlotte choked on a piece of apple.

“I looked over and she started gagging. I could see something kind of in the back of her throat, mistakenly reached in to try to grab it out, I think that pushed it back into her throat,” Hasse recalled.

Mayer said the worried mother “came running over” to him about her choking daughter, and he immediately sprang into action.

“I grabbed her and Officer Ramos to my right flipped her over, we did back slaps on her and got food dislodged from her throat right away,” Mayer said, adding that the incident “caught us all off guard.”

Once that piece of fruit was dislodged from the toddler’s throat, the child was able to breathe normally again.

Related: Missed Blood Infection Kills 12-Year-Old California Girl

Perhaps most surprising of all: Mayer told the news outlet that saving the toddler was his first act as a paid police officer.

“This is what he was meant to do,” Melanie Hasse said of the cop, as WLS reported. “To save lives in some kind of way.”

Just one story about one cop — that speaks volumes about the work our police officers do on a regular, and largely unheralded, basis.