Thanks to a Lake of the Ozarks State Park ranger, a 5-year-old Columbia girl was reunited with a very special bear after accidentally leaving it behind Halloween weekend.
Jessica Martin and her family were on their way to Grandma’s house, a 450-mile trip to Oklahoma, when they decided to make a pit stop at Pa He Tsi public beach in Osage Beach.
In a letter written to the Lake Sun by Jessie’s father, Bob, he described his daughter’s relationship with the stuffed bear affectionately.
“Just about all children have special toys. The ones that give them comfort during stressful times and make them happy. To her, this was Beary.”
The family packed back in their van after 20 minutes and made their way onward, he said, but just outside of Springfield - an hour and a half later - he said his daughter asked a question that “sent a chill through us all.”
“Mom? Where is Beary?”
To their dismay, Beary was no where in sight, and after much thought, Jessie remembered putting him on a park bench at Pa He Tsi “to look at the boats while she played,” he said.
It was too late in their trip to turn around to rescue the bear. Martin described the distressing moments they spent explaining that to her.
“As you can imagine, she didn’t take it well and her heartbreaking pleas made this old, gruff, surly dad want to cry. Questions I couldn’t answer like ‘Who will take care of him,’ ‘Where will he live now,’ ‘What if they throw him away,” he said. “She was genuinely devastated and took full responsibility for the loss, which I admired in one so small.”
Martin said, although skeptical of the outcome, he got in touch with the park’s offices to see if anyone could search for Beary.
One of the women they spoke to explained that the park was very short-staffed, but took down their number in case someone could go out.
As luck would have it, someone was available. That person was Ranger Dave Stark.
“After the call came in, I went over (to Pa He Tsi) and went to looking,” Stark said, adding that he was tipped off by a fellow park-goer to the bear’s whereabouts.
“I’m a father and a grandpa; I know how important a bear can be, especially to a little girl,” he said of what the family would describe as his heroic efforts. “Maybe our most important job is taking care of the people. I’d like to think that any other ranger here would have done the same.”
