“And I’m going, ‘There’s a truck down at the trailhead and there’s a bear sitting on the dashboard.’” “I run up to these rangers and I’m hyperventilating,” Hayden said. They left a note on the vehicle and found other rangers. It was Mazzarisi’s day off and another ranger who was working on the trail had the keys. Unfortunately, the ranger’s truck was locked. She took a picture and sent it to Addie Pascal, who quickly confirmed it was Teddy. That's exactly what happened when Hayden and her adult niece, a photographer with cancer, spotted a stuffed bear in a ranger’s truck after being turned back from a trail that was closed due to bear activity. “And that morning I said, ‘OK Lord, if this bear is around, please put that bear in my path and let me come home with that bear today.’” A family friend spotted the bear on the dash, contacted rangers and was able to get the bear back to Naomi in Jackson, Wyo. Naomi had lost the bear in the park nearly a year earlier. In this photo provided by Terry Hayden, Naomi's Pascal's stuffed bear, Teddy, is pictured on the dash of a park ranger's pickup truck in Glacier National Park, Mont., on Sept. So when she and some family members went to Glacier in late September, she told them about it and stopped to check on potential lost-and-found sites.
Hayden, meanwhile, felt bad about the loss of Naomi’s special bear. A Michigan woman posted a photo she took of Teddy on the day it was lost, saying it was the only bear she saw in the park. People responded with well wishes and offers of replacement bears.
But there are many more adventures to be had!” In June, Addie Pascal posted a plea on Facebook for help finding Teddy, saying: “He’s been by her side for so many milestones. Teddy had a busy spring and summer, watching wolves howl at each other and working “bear jams,” which are traffic jams caused by bears being near the road, Mazzarisi said. “It was a perfect little mascot” and conversation piece, Mazzarisi said. Mary and when Mazzarisi returned to work in April he “immediately put him on the dash of my patrol truck." Teddy “hibernated” in Mazzarisi’s cabin in St. He was unaware the stuffed animal had been reported lost, but for some reason couldn’t bring himself to dump it in the trash. “Typically, items that aren’t worth much monetarily get thrown out,” Mazzarisi said. "So happy the little girl got him back," Windham said. Earlier this year, Windham saw a post about the lost teddy bear on a Glacier park Facebook page, knew it had to be the same one and responded with the picture she had taken the day it was lost.
Windham, of Michigan, took a picture of the teddy bear as a joke, because it was the only bear she saw in the park that day. In this photo provided by Nona Windham, Naomi Pascal's teddy bear sits on a rock near the Hidden Lake Trail in Glacier National Park, Mont., on Oct. It wasn’t too long before Ranger Tom Mazzarisi, a bear specialist in Glacier, spotted the stuffed bear, soaking wet and sitting in melting snow near the Hidden Lake Trail while he and two others were doing some end-of-season work. She made a report to park officials, hoping someone might turn in the bear to a lost-and-found. It snowed overnight, closing the higher elevations of the park for the season and preventing Hayden from returning to search for Teddy.
They were almost back to Hayden’s home in Bigfork that night when they realized they didn’t have Teddy. While Pascal and a friend of his went on a hike in Glacier National Park, family friend Terri Hayden watched the kids. When Pascal took his kids to Montana in October 2020, Teddy was once again along for the adventure. She took Teddy with her on family trips to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Croatia and Greece. Teddy was the first gift Ben and Addie Pascal sent to Naomi before she was adopted in 2016. It made ’em feel like there is good in the world, which I believe there is.” “It was just a story of hope and kindness and people just working together,” Pascal said.