Teddy found
A young Drouin boy has been reunited with his much-loved teddy thanks to staff at the Warragul Linen Service
Ashton Honeymoon was a patient at Monash Children’s Hospital, Clayton when his Charlie Bear was “lost” amidst the linen when his bed was changed.
Ashton’s aunt Kelleigh Summersgill turned to social media in the search for Charlie Bear.
Kelleigh praised more than 500 people for sharing her social media post and Warragul Linen Service staff who, upon seeing the post, searched everywhere for the teddy.
Kelleigh was an emotional aunty when she picked up “Charlie Bear” and incredible thankful to the Warragul Linen Service staff.
“Upon arriving in Ashton’s room, his eyes lit up seeing Charlie,” she said. “I have a very strong feeling he won’t be leaving Ashton’s side.”
She said Ashton was taken to the Clayton hospital with a ruptured appendix and was recovering from emergency surgery.
“Ashton is on the road to recovery and should be home very soon,” added Ms Summersgill.
Warragul Linen Service general manager Alan Hollensen said he was “absolutely thrilled we could get Charlie Bear back to him”.
“It’s one of the nice things about the job; when you can reunite a child with a lost bear,” he said.
Staff member Josh Newnham found Charlie on the sorting belt, just before the linen made the journey around to the washer.
“Fortunately it was found at the start of the process, he was a colourful bear and of reasonable size,” Mr Hollensen said.
The linen service processes 130 tonnes of linen each week from a number of hospitals and groups, including the Alfred group, Monash group, Maryvale Private, West Gippsland and other smaller hospitals.
The most common items reported lost include iPads, mobile phones, dentures, jewellery and teddy bears. The service has a wellestablished system to report, track and return lost items, with 85 per cent of items recovered and returned to their owners.
However, the loss of any child’s teddy bear is a priority.
“Believe it or not, we take it very seriously,” said Mr Hollensen. “If a child has been in hospital and they lose their bear or comfort item, that’s not very much fun.
“With teddy bears generally the child is in hospital having a difficult or unusual experience, so when they have lost a bear that is close to them we pull out all the stops to get it back.”
Another lucky save over the past three years was a two-carat diamond engagement ring.
“Teddy bears will go through, but things like jewellery can do down the drain,” he said.
After four hours searching through linen, the engaged couple contacted the linen service. The linen had already been through the big washing machine but fortunately the ring did not end up down the drain. It had been caught in the pocket of theatre scrubs.
“When they came to collect it, they were thrilled with how sparkly and clean it was,” Mr Hollensen said.