Girl reunited with her teddy bear

The 6-year-old kid Naomi Pascal lost the toy in Glacier park a year earlier

Helena: A little girl who lost a special teddy bear she’d had since being adopted from an Ethiopian orphanage thought it was gone forever when she forgot it along a trail in Glacier National Park last year.

Her parents and family friends still held onto a glimmer of hope. Hope won out. Thanks to a social media plea, the sharp eyes and soft heart of a park ranger and the closure of a hiking trail because of grizzly bear activity on the same day a family friend visited the park, the teddy bear is back in the arms of 6-year-old Naomi Pascal in Jackson, Wyoming.

The bear’s return, which has earned 12,000 likes on the Glacier National Park Facebook page, is a beautiful story that resonates, said Ben Pascal, Naomi’s dad and the senior pastor at the Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole, a popular ski town south of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

“It was just a story of hope and kindness and people just working together,” Pascal said. “It touched people’s hearts. It gave ’em hope. It made ’em feel like there is good in the world, which I believe there is.”

Teddy was the first gift Ben and Addie Pascal sent to Naomi before she was adopted in 2016. She took Teddy with her on family trips to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Croatia and Greece.
When Pascal took his kids to Montana in October 2020, Teddy was once again along for the adventure. While Pascal and a friend of his went on a hike in Glacier National Park, family friend Terri Hayden watched the kids. They were almost back to Hayden’s home in Bigfork that night when they realised they didn’t have Teddy.

It snowed overnight, closing the higher elevations of the park for the season and preventing Hayden from returning to search for Teddy. She made a report to park officials, hoping someone might turn in the bear to a lost-and-found.

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.

“Typically, items that aren’t worth much monetarily get thrown out,” Mazzarisi said. He was unaware the stuffed animal had been reported lost, but for some reason couldn’t bring himself to dump it in the trash.

They knew about the bear, confirmed where it had been found and soon returned Teddy to Hayden along with a junior park ranger badge and a ranger hat.

Hayden shipped the bear to Naomi, who said she was really excited when she got Teddy back. Hayden bought another stuffed bear for Mazzarisi. He named her Clover, he said, because she reminds him of a grizzly bear he saw in Yellowstone National Park that would lay on her belly in a clover patch and eat.

Clover is wintering at Mazzarisi’s cabin in St. Mary. Next spring, she’ll ride in his truck.