Boy with autism reunited with ‘Bear,’ his safety toy

Two-year-old Lucas has been reunited with his best friend — a stuffed teddy bear.

Lucas has autism and “Bear” is his safety toy, which helps him calm down when he gets upset.

Around 2 p.m. Saturday, his family went to a park near Britannia and Creditview roads in Mississauga and that was the last time they saw Bear.

“I created the habit of always looking in the stroller for the teddy bear,” his mother Jessica Hoffart said. But when she went to check for Bear she couldn’t find it anywhere.

“I looked in the trash bins, on the road,” she said. “I still didn’t find it.”

In an effort to find Bear, Hoffart created a Twitter account. At least four people sent stuffed bears to her, including the same type of bear as Lucas’.

A woman named Sandra said she found the stuffed animal only hours after it went missing.

Sandra said she was stuck in a line of cars a she was trying to leave a Costco parking lot close to where the bear was last seen, when she noticed an object on the ground.

“I asked my son Daniel to go and grab the bear,” she said. “At that time we didn’t know it was a bear, and it was really dirty.

“We came back home, we just washed the bear and I kept it with me. And we saw the news this morning.”

CityNews was there when the little boy and his beloved Bear were reunited on Tuesday afternoon.

Hoffart said she has been thinking up ways to ensure Bear finds his way back home, should he go missing again. She’s thinking of making a T-shirt for the stuffed animal with her contact information on it.