Fuzzy Rider Patrols Cities’ Streets Minnesota School’s Ted E. Bear Rides With Nation’s Law Officers

Ted E. Bear is an ordinary stuffed animal with an extraordinary mission: to ride with as many law enforcement officers in as many states as he can before May.

That’s when the fuzzy white creature will return - C.O.D. - to the Minnesota elementary school students who devised his travel plans last fall.

Bear spent the past two days in Spokane. After spending a week with an Idaho State Police corporal, Bear was passed Saturday to Washington State Patrol Trooper Mike Shaw.

The trip began Sept. 8 in Pipestone, Minn. Students at Brown Elementary School slapped a backpack on the stuffed animal, clipped a diaper bag to its paw and sent him away with a local police officer.

A note on the front page of Bear’s journal asked law enforcement officers to take the creature to work and write about his adventures in the binder. Come May, Ted should be returned to the school.

He spent Monday resting at the WSP office.

“We thought he should take it easy for a day before heading west,” Sgt. Chris Powell said. “We’re thinking he should take a trip to the state capitol.”

Powell, like the dozens of other law enforcement officers from five states who’ve spent time with Bear, has no problem referring to the fuzzy teddy as though it were a human being.

All the officers Bear traveled with wrote lengthy reports about the visit.

“We went on a coffee break. Ted had KoolAid,” wrote Steve Wisniewski, a Montana Highway Patrol trooper in Helena. “We woke up at 3 a.m. and had to go to an accident call.”

Bear had a wild ride with Russell Sprague, a South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper. Besides pulling over a pickup for driving 82 mph, the team raced 11 pints of blood to a local hospital for a 12-year-old girl who had been in an accident.

“Ted E. said he felt really safe with me because I made him wear his seat belt,” Sprague wrote, adding a smiley face.

In Salem, S.D., the silent companion witnessed Trooper Darron Hondick arrest three people for having four pounds of marijuana in their car.

“Ted seemed glad we could do this to help get drugs off the street,” Hondick wrote.

Badges and patches from departments in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and now Washington were pinned to Bear’s blue T-shirt. Photographs of Bear in squad cars decorate his journal pages.

From Spokane’s WSP troopers, Bear received a junior trooper badge, two pins, several WSP key chains, a map of the Evergreen State and a slew of stickers.

A radio operator also put a small brown teddy bear in Bear’s diaper bag. The new companion has a black bow tie, a required accessory on the WSP troopers’ uniforms, and a badge.

“We figured he might like some company in the down times,” Powell said of Bear’s traveling buddy. “He’ll have a heck of a story when he gets home.”