How One Mom Is Restoring Joy to Kids Who Lost Their Favorite Toys
Randi Jaffe couldn't sleep—tossing and turning, worrying about all the Los Angeles families whose homes were burning. 'They're losing everything,' the New Jersey mother of two fretted, and then she began to wonder, If I was told I had to leave my home, what's the first thing I would grab?
Randi sat bolt upright because she knew what she would take: her 3 1⁄2-year-old son Ryan's beloved baby cheetah. It had no tags—she couldn't remember where it came from. But Ryan couldn't sleep without it. It was absolutely irreplaceable.
As a child life specialist at a local children's hospital, Randi helps kids through the trauma of scary places, needles and surgeries.
'Does your child have a favorite stuffy?' she asks parents when their little one undergoes an operation. She gives the bear, puppy or stuffed turtle a matching hospital bracelet and sometimes even a gown.
In the OR, Randi stands by until the anesthesia has taken hold. 'Everything's going fine,' she'll tell the worried mom and dad, handing over the stuffy so they can hold it until their child wakes up in Recovery.
'It breaks my heart, thinking about all those children who weren't allowed back home even long enough to collect their favorite toy,' Randi told her sister-in-law, Amanda, the next afternoon. 'I'm hoping I can replace at least a few of them,' she said, and opened an Instagram account: @LostStuffyProject.
Tell me about your child's lost stuffed animal and I'll try to replace it, she wrote on social media, and that very afternoon, Randi's phone began blowing up with new followers asking how they could help.
Among the offers was a message from a mom whose little boy had lost his stuffed unicorn. When you open the zipper, lots of little unicorns fall out. They wouldn't let us back in our house to get it, she wrote, but luckily the stuffy was still available at a store online, and the very next day, an identical unicorn was on its way to the family's temporary address.
Another mom wrote in about her son's lost stuffy, a zoo mascot from a family trip to Amsterdam. By now, thousands of people around the world were offering help, and five minutes after she posted the request, Randi received a miraculous message from someone in Amsterdam: I'm from LA, but we're currently living in Amsterdam. I know the zoo and its mascot. I'll take my kids there tomorrow and buy a replacement from the gift shop.
One request nearly stumped Randi and her network of helpers: My little sister lost her pink bunny. It used to belong to our mom, the message said. It's over 30 years old. There's no way we'll ever be able to replace it.
Randi and other helpers scoured the internet, thrift stores, attics and garages. No luck, but happily, someone had posted the photo to Reddit.
I have that very pink bunny! a woman posted. He's been with me since I was little. I'd be happy to pass him along but he's in pretty rough shape.
That's when another volunteer came forward. I've been looking for a way to help fire victims, wrote Danielle Allore, who restores stuffed animals for a living. Danielle took the bunny apart, laundered, restuffed and sewed him back. Then he was off to a second life with a thankful little girl.
When Randi learned of a small Altadena preschool where the kids' classroom had lost their books, toys and 6-foot plush stuffed giraffe to smoke damage, she used donations to replace them—even the giraffe. 'Half of the class lost their homes—we couldn't lose their second home too,' Randi told a local reporter.
Eventually, the fires were extinguished, but not Randi and the other group members' determination to help. 'There will always be more disasters,' says Randi, so she's transformed the Lost Stuffy Project into a nonprofit with a wider mission of replacing cherished fuzzy friends lost in floods, hurricanes and house fires across the country.
'When a family loses their home, they have so much else to think about,' she says. 'If we can help by taking this one thing off their plate and bringing a lot of comfort and joy to little boys and girls, we'll all sleep better at night.'
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