Family heartbroken over stolen special teddy bear
Lisa Durovick and her son care little about the stolen Playstation. They aren’t losing sleep over the gift cards that were taken. Quite frankly, they say, it doesn’t much matter if whoever is responsible for smashing the car window and breaking into the vehicle is ever brought to justice.
All they want is for a special teddy bear to be returned.
The stuffed animal has enormous sentimental value. It was a Christmas gift Durovick had someone make from a shirt that belonged to her father, Doug, who died almost one year before the theft, which happened early Tuesday morning in downtown Saskatoon.
“That’s the one thing: no amount of money we can pay can replace that gift,” Durovick said.
The idea for the gift came after the family looked back through their photographs and noticed that Doug had coincidentally worn the same shirt to graduation ceremonies for Lisa’s son, Nate, and daughter, Katelyn. Lisa decided that as a Christmas gift for her children this past holiday season, she would have a memory bear custom-made for each of them out of that same shirt.
Nate and Katelyn were given matching purple-checkered bears, along with a photo of each of them with their grandfather wearing the shirt on their respective grad days.
“It took a lot for me to get it cut up,” Durovick said.
On Monday, Nate, now 22 years old, and his wife Kenniston had travelled from their home in the southeast Saskatchewan community of Churchbridge to spend time with Kenniston’s sister at her apartment near Fifth Avenue and 25th Street East. Some late Christmas celebrations were planned as part of the trip, so gifts and other items were inside the car.
When Nate went outside to the vehicle on Tuesday morning, he saw that a window had been smashed and virtually all the vehicle’s contents had been taken. Once he got past the initial shock, it dawned on him what was missing. “When I did realize, there was a very sudden drop in my stomach,” he said.
The Playstation can easily be replaced. Little Birdy Pottery in Lloydminster, where Lisa lives, heard about the robbery and will provide a new yarn bowl to replace the one that was supposed to be a Christmas gift.
Speedy Auto Glass made special arrangements to wrap the window and ensure new glass could be installed in Regina, where Nate and Kenniston needed to travel for a scheduled appointment on Wednesday.
Those have all been small headaches compared to the giant heartaches over the missing bear.
“That stuff stinks, but it’s the shirt and the bear that we can’t replicate,” Lisa said.
“The part that bothers me the most is that I had thought of my future children holding it and playing with it,” Nate said. “Them having that bear to hold would have been the closest thing they would have had as an interaction with him.”
Lisa has been trying to spread the word, hoping the right person hears about the distinctive stuffy.
“No questions asked,” she said. “If the person who took it realized the meaning behind it ... it won’t mean anything to anybody else but my son. All that matters is that, if at all possible, it can be returned.”