Dunedin Elementary student Trista Sarles-Redfield, 9, explains how much her father's return from a year-long deployment means to her.
Trista Sarles-Redfield wished for two things from Santa this year. The first was a dolphin. Her second wish was for her daddy to come home. On Jan. 17, Trista's wish came true. "I'm really happy he's home," the Dunedin Elementary fourth-grader told reporters after he surprised her with a bouquet of pink-tipped roses in her classroom Thursday morning. Trista's father, a U.S. soldier stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, had just returned from a year-long deployment in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He actually hid in the closet while his daughter got ready for school Thursday morning so he wouldn't spoil the surprise he had planned. "She actually came into my bathroom with her hair brush and all kinds of different stuff and she …
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Dunedin Elementary School
900 Union St, Dunedin, FL
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Trista Sarles-Redfield, 9, was delighted to see her father enter her fourth-grade classroom at Dunedin Elementary School on Thursday. He surprised her with flowers in front of her peers a day earlier than expected.
Trista Sarles-Redfield was sitting on the carpet, listening to her teacher read a story about Martin Luther King Jr, when she received the surprise of a lifetime. Her stoic Army Major dad, deployed overseas for the past year, appeared over her shoulder, carrying a small bouquet of pink-tipped roses. The Dunedin Elementary fourth-grader hadn't expected to see him for another day. She instantly got up and wrapped her arms around his waist. "She was going to cry," her mother Amanda Redfield said. "I saw her tearing up and she had to catch herself. She needed a distraction." That's when Trista, a straight-A student on the Principal's List, released the bear hug she had around her dad and stepped back quietly. She took the roses from her father…
27.997378
-82.775504
Dunedin Elementary School
900 Union St, Dunedin, FL
/articles/deployed-dad-surprises-daughter-at-dunedin-elementary
944337
/locations/8623953
Jason Bartolone
3:50 pm on Thursday, January 17, 2013
Heartwarming! more ›