MESA, Ariz. — The hunt is on for a teddy bear bandit who stole big bears from a Mesa family’s lawn.
The family put them out there to put smiles on faces during the now-expired stay-at-home order, and everything had been going just fine until the thief struck near Guadalupe and Dobson roads.
“We had an obstacle course here, jumping jacks, follow the line, and dance party, spin, and we had a bag of balloons animals,” Ericka Pendley said.
Pendley and Darren Rosselli took the family fun during the lockdown trend to the extreme, and it was complete with the now-missing big bears in the yard.
After weeks of fun with no problems, they realized a thief stole their two giant-sized teddy bears one morning.
“We’re sad because we lost our bears,” 5-year-old Anaya Espiriti said.
So, they posted flyers and went to social media searching for clues. One neighbor posted that they saw an ad on an app that looked just like the missing panda bear.
“It was really disappointing because we just assumed it was some bored teenagers or just someone walking by and just grabbed them,” Rosselli said. “We were just really disappointed that someone was trying to sell them.”
They filed a police report and the ad is now down, and the user has deleted the account. But as silly as this sounds, it’s not just about the stolen bears.
“You’re taking away love and joy and excitement for children,” the family said. “And that small little piece of comfort that these kids were finding: a bear hunt or seeing a giant rainbow teddy bear sitting in a front yard, and you literally took a piece of that joy away from them.”
And Ayana has a message to the person who took the bears.
“We hope our bears come back, and they aren’t gone forever and ever and ever,” she said.