DAPHNE, Ala. — If you’ve seen “Toy Story 3,” you know what happens to toys at a landfill, but this story has a happy ending thanks to employees at an Alabama Publix.
Madison, 3, forgot her stuffed bunny in a shopping cart last week. Her mom, Jenna Rachal, went back to the store in hopes of finding her daughter's toy, but it wasn't turned in, WPMI reported.
She did what almost any mother in this day and age would do: turned to Facebook for help.
The manager of the store, Mike Gayhart, saw the post and what he did eventually helped Madison be reunited with her toy, WKRG reported.
Thanks to security cameras, Gayhart tracked Madison and her bunny's movements from the store, the parking lot, the cart and eventually a trash can and a dumpster. It then went to a trash compactor before being dumped into a garbage truck and driven to a landfill, WPMI reported.
The story could end there, with Madison getting the bad news that her friend was gone forever.
But Gayhart and three other employees went to the landfill and started digging, WPMI reported. Against all odds, they found him.
Gayheart then took the bunny home and washed him three times, so he could be returned to Madison, WPMI reported.
"These guys did not tell me they were going to the dump. I did not ask them to do that either," Rachal told WKRG.
Rachal said that the bunny still has a smell, but Madison doesn’t care. She hasn’t let go of him and says he smells fine.
Rachal says she will call Publix corporate offices to tell them what the employees did for her family, WPMI reported.
"Such kindness and above and beyond for their customers, community. Awesome people deserve to be recognized," she told WKRG.
Cox Media Group
