3-year-old's beloved stuffed pal saved from trash bin by mall cop

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The stuffed bear's name was Teddy, and before she was dropped near the ATM in the Macy's wing at Eastview Mall in July, she belonged to 3-year-old Ruthie Drew.

No one at mall security knew that when they tagged her plush toe "No. 879" and tossed her in a black milk crate in a closet that doubles as the lost-and-found.

They call it "the children's box," but it's just a milk crate, and the 8-inch beige bear with black eyes was just another number in it, like the green binky, the toddler sneaker and the doll with a hard plastic head.

"It was basically lock-up," said Wendy Roche, the mall's marketing director whose Facebook post in search of the bear's owner last week was widely shared and led to a touching reunion between Teddy and Ruthie in the Von Maur wing on Monday.

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The conditions in the children's box were a far cry from the loving arms of Ruthie, who had clutched Teddy and her twin, also called Teddy, to sleep at night in her Penfield home before leaving her near that ATM, where a cleaning crew found her at 11:13 a.m. July 6.

Teddy probably would have been in a trash can by now had it not been for the effect she had on Sgt. Scott Woodruff. Mall protocol calls for lost items deemed to be of "no value," like Teddy, to be donated or thrown out after three months.

But once Teddy had served her time, Woodruff didn’t have the heart to get rid of her. He figured Goodwill or the Salvation Army would throw her out and he couldn't bear the thought of it.

"It looked so loved," Woodruff, 59, said. "My granddaughter has a little lamb like this named Lamby, and I thought of her."

What is it about teddy bears that melt the heart?

"I suspect it starts with nostalgia," said Patricia Hogan, a doll curator at the Strong National Museum of Play. "All of us had a teddy bear or some soft, cuddly companion that got us through some tough times in childhood and we empathize with little Ruthie."

Teddy bears became a household name in 1902, after President Theodore Roosevelt on a hunting trip to Mississippi refused to shoot an exhausted female black bear that his guide had tethered to a tree as a gift to him.

The Washington Post published a cartoon of the incident a few days later, and the bear became known as "Teddy’s bear." A legend was born.

No matter the size, teddies are bigger than other toys. They're among the first things children learn to care for, the first things they truly call their own, and the first things for which they're responsible.

For that reason, child psychologists refer to teddy bears as "transitional objects" in that they bridge the gap between the helplessness of infancy and independence.

Ruthie's mother, Diana Drew, recalled the twin teddies entering her daughter's life when she was just 5 days old. They were from a dollar store.

"To us, it was nothing," Drew said of the lost bear. "To her, it meant everything in the world."

As Ruthie grew, the teddies became her playmates. They attended her tea parties. They were customers in her store, and they helped run an imaginary produce stand.

When it was discovered that Teddy was missing, Drew said the family retraced their steps to Target, to Wegmans and the mall to no avail. She didn't think about lost-and-found because she figured the ratty old bear would have been thrown out.

She tried replacing Teddy, but nothing would do. Ruthie tossed all the substitutes on the floor. "We all lost sleep over that bear," Drew said.

On Friday, Ruthie's brother Darius, 9, spotted Teddy on the evening television news. Local media outlets had picked up the story, which was moving fast on social media under #LittleLostBear.

Over the weekend, a handful of people contacted the mall claiming ownership of the bear. But Drew had proof in the form of a photograph of Ruthie clutching Teddy in bed.

So on Monday, Woodruff removed Teddy's toe tag and walked her to the Von Maur wing, where Ruthie was waiting with her mother and brother and reporters looking for a feel-good story.

"It feels good," Woodruff said on the walk. "It feels really good."