WEST PARIS — A teddy bear from Pennsylvania that had been missing for two months is on its way home.

“This bear means SOOOO much to me!” said Rebecca Slyder, 17, of Mt. Holly Springs, Pa., in an email to the Sun Journal on Tuesday, asking for help in recovering Beary, the teddy bear she left in a West Paris home in early July.

“She’s been a constant friend to me in a military town where friends come and go, never usually staying more than a year or more,” Slyder said. “She’s traveled the world in my arms. I can’t even imagine going to college without having that bear with me.”

The bear, which wears a tiny beaded cross made by Rebecca in preschool, was in her grandfather’s arms when he died, said Slyder’s mother, Mary.

She said that for two months, she called the Portland International Jetport, the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office and finally, the West Paris homeowner, hoping to find the missing bear.

The homeowner, Natalie Piirainen Keane, the mother of her daughter’s friend, searched the house and found the bear in the pillowcase of her 8-year-old son, Slyder said.

She said that instead of mailing the bear right back to Pennsylvania, Keane held onto it, wanting an apology from Rebecca for “harassing” her son Daniel about the missing bear.

Keane said she had wanted to talk to Rebecca before returning the bear, which was in the back seat of Keane’s car Wednesday.

“It’s ridiculous, completely,” Keane said. “I definitely intend on (sending it back).”

The story of the missing bear began in early July when Rebecca Slyder decided to visit her friend in West Paris. She packed her childhood teddy bear with its pink bow and sweater for the flight from Pennsylvania to Maine.

After spending a week with the young man whom she met in Pennsylvania and with whom she continued a friendship through Facebook, she packed up her belongings and headed back to the Portland International Jetport in Portland, assuming the bear was in her overnight bag. But when she got home, Beary had disappeared.

Slyder and her mother began a frantic search, first calling the jetport to ask employees to look for it. Mary Slyder said airport officials searched the terminal twice, calling her back each time to say they had no luck finding the bear.

Desperate to get the teddy bear back for her brokenhearted daughter, Mary Slyder called the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office for help.

In an attempt to assist the distraught family, a deputy went to the Keane house three times but found no one home, Sheriff Wayne Gallant said Wednesday.

“It’s not a law enforcement thing,” Gallant said. “We’re not forcing them to do something. We have to be careful. It’s not a police state.”

Keane said Wednesday that she simply hadn’t had the time or the money to mail the bear back immediately and had no idea the police had knocked on her door.

By 4 p.m. Wednesday, the bear was packed and posted and presumably on its way home.

If she arrives home in time, Beary is expected to be safely put in Rebecca’s cheerleader bag for the first football game of her high school season later this week.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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