6-year-old Ethiopian traveler, Naomi Pascal, went on a family hike with her adopted parents, Addie and Ben Pascal when she accidentally misplaced her beloved stuffed teddy bear. The keepsake item was given to her by her parents and when they visited Glacier National Park together in Montana, she lost her toy.
They visited the park in fall 2020 and the search for the missing teddy bear went on after a viral Facebook post was made by Naomi’s parents in June 2021.
Addie Pascal posted to Facebook in hopes of one last chance that the mystery of teddy would be found. Many people wanted to help Naomi and her teddy bear be reunited. A Facebook user named Hayden and her family traveled to Glacier National Park recently and spotted that Park Ranger Tom Mazzarisi had a similar-looking stuffed bear inside his patrol car.
Mazzarisi found Naomi Pascal’s teddy bear in the snow off of a trail during his monitoring of the Hidden Lake Trail in the national park.
However, the mission gets even more difficult when travelers aren’t able to access the Hidden Lake Trail because of the public pathway being snowed out. One day after Mazzarisi and his colleagues were surveilling the various trails of Glacier National Park, they saw a teddy bear and the park ranger wanted to hold onto the toy. The toy stayed with the ranger for months until Hayden told the park’s staff about the background of Naomi’s missing toy when she visited later that year.
The park rangers who were on-site that day returned the teddy bear to Hayden when she showed them a picture of the lost item on a Facebook post that was garnering a lot of attention. Hayden received the teddy bear with a national kid’s park badge and hat. Then, she mailed the bear out to Naomi Pascal, who was so excited to be finally reunited with her beloved teddy bear.
Later, Hayden purchased another stuffed bear for park ranger Tom Mazzarisi after returning the bear back to its original owner.
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