A family visiting from Tennessee won’t soon forget their trip to Portland after the downtown community came together to help them find their son’s lost stuffed bunny.

Jennifer Dzermejko said her son, Eddie, 5, lost his bunny pal, Bean, when he put him down while playing on the rocks in Tommy’s Park sometime during the afternoon on Oct. 12.

“When we left, (my son) forgot Bean. He’s had (Bean) since he was a baby and the stuffed animal has been a steady companion ever since. We put the word out on social media that he was missing and came back Friday morning to retrace our steps with no luck,” Dzermejko said.

The family then got a call from Kristin Forester, the manager at Gus & Ruby Letterpress, who had found Bean.

“We went straight there and picked him up. It was so great how the community came together to get Eddie and Bean reunited,” Dzermejko said.

Forester said she found the stuffed bunny on a bench near the intersection of Exchange and Middle streets.

Adam MacDonald, the communications director for Portland Downtown, said his organization first learned about the missing stuffed animal when a Facebook follower sent a link to a lost-and-found posting on Craigslist. 

“My heart went out to the boy,” MacDonald said, “so I decided to share the Craigslist post on the Portland Downtown Facebook page. As soon as I did, I noticed that many of our followers began sharing the post.”

He said that within an hour or so, the post had been shared more than 90 times. To widen the search for the bunny even more, he sent an email blast to contacts at hundreds of downtown shops and restaurants.

Forty-five minutes later, MacDonald got an email from Forester, exclaiming, “I have the bunny.”

“The search for the bunny is a wonderful reminder that we’re part of a caring and tight-knit community,”MacDonald said.

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