A Calgary family on a trip to Chinook Centre experienced the lows and highs last week, when a stuffie went missing.
On Monday, Sophia Ricci Cruz and her four-year-old daughter were in the mall’s food court at around 1:30 p.m., eating, but when they left their table, in front of New York Fries and Nam, her daughter forgot to take her stuffie.
It wasn’t just any old stuffie, either, Cruz said, in an email to CTV News. It was a Jellycat Bunny that she’d had since she was born in December, 2020.
Cruz posted about the missing stuffie on Facebook, and reached out to Chinook’s lost and found.
The bad news was that the Jellycat Bunny was AWOL.
The good news was that maybe it was time for a new, free stuffie.
“Though we have yet to find (the stuffie) Fufu,,” Cruz wrote, “the wonderful administration in Chinook Centre reached out to us and offered to buy her a new bunny as well as gift cards as a little silver lining on her losing her best friend.”
The stuffie went missing, but Chinook Centre made up for it. (Photo: Sophia Ricci Cruz)
On Friday, she added, she returned to Chinook and her daughter picked up a new stuffie, along with a few other free toys, “courtesy of Chinook Centre.”
“I thought it would be a great feel-good story,” Cruz wrote, “as I know a lot of people can relate to having misplaced their stuffie or blankie.
“As well as how the great people of Calgary pulled through,” she added, “and made such a wonderful memory for a little girl.”