WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama’s annual question-and-answer session with the children of Executive Office employees took a serious turn Thursday when a 10-year-old girl in the front row told the first lady that her dad had been out of work.
Then the girl popped up to hand Mrs. Obama his résumé.
“My dad’s been out of a job for three years and I wanted to give you his résumé,” she said.
“Oh my goodness,” the first lady responded.
Obama seemed a little taken aback but then explained to the other children, who might not have heard the girl’s comment, that the matter was “a little private, but she’s doing something for her dad.”
Mrs. Obama promised to deal with the matter later.
When the event ended, Mrs. Obama gave the girl, Charlotte Bell, a hug.
She then reached back to grab the résumé off a table as she left the East Room.
The first lady played host to the children at the White House on Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Charlotte’s family had joked over the weekend about making a job pitch to the first lady, but her parents didn’t know she would give it a try, according to her mother, an executive branch employee who did not want to be identified.
Charlotte’s father, Ben Bell, has been looking for a policy job for more than two years and recently has been trying to get a job with the Obama administration. He worked on the Obama campaign in 2012.
The first lady also appeared on the season finale of the NBC hit “Parks and Recreation” on Thursday night.
On the show, she appeared as a keynote speaker at the National Parks Conference in San Francisco.
In real life, she is scheduled to speak to students at Kansas Expocentre in Topeka on May 16.