And now for some good news during a weird time
Ashley Buterman was headed home to the Upper East Side from JFK airport when her 6-year-old daughter, Piper, asked for her Lovey stuffed animal, “Buddy.”
After searching all her bags, Buterman knew that “Buddy” was in fact, left in an airport bathroom.
“We double checked all of our bags and Buddy wasn’t there,” Buterman said. “Immediately I started looking up every lost and found at the airport and in the terminal. I left messages, I filed three different lost and found claims and my husband and I tweeted to JetBlue.”
They were desperate.
Not knowing what else to do, Buterman posted on the Upper East Side Mamas Facebook group, hoping for advice. In the meantime Piper was hysterical and unable to sleep that night; she’s had Buddy as a bedtime companion since she was 6 months old.
In what can only be described as a twist of fate, one of the mothers in the Facebook group happened to fly into the same airport and the same terminal Buterman and her family had been in. She messaged Buterman and was able to find Buddy in the bathroom.
“My daughter had cried for four hours straight, so when I got this message I screamed out loud and I think I started crying because I was so relieved and so glad that we got it back,” Buterman said.
Buterman and her daughter were beyond thrilled. The woman who found Buddy, she said, was very casual about the situation; she thought she had done a simple favor, but to Piper it meant the world.
“There are people that do, in their minds, small acts of kindness that have huge impacts on other people’s lives,” Buterman added. “In a world with Covid and everything else going on, it’s just nice to have a truly positive happy-good story.”
