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BreAnna (L) and MyKenna (R) reunited with good friends in mid-June..

D1’s Haynes finds bag of lambs and bunnies
a month after it vanishes in St. Maries

In mid-May, a black bag full of lambs, bunnies and blankets was lost north of St. Maries. Ashley George, the Kid’s College Director at the school in town, presumed it was gone forever. Was she ever glad to be wrong.

Gary Haynes, a Level 3 TTO from District 1’s maintenance crew with 20 years of service, found the bag a month later while mowing about five miles north of town off Idaho Highway 3. It was found about 100 feet off the road, down an embankment. Turns out it had pillow-sized stuffed animals her kids had collected over the last 10 years -- a one-eyed rabbit and a well-loved lamb, plus some other bedding.

Actual value was very limited, but sentimental value ran high.

George and family had been camping in the area that weekend, when on the way home they discovered they had lost a very sentimental black garbage bag out of the back of their truck.

They knew they’d lost the bag somewhere between Harvest Foods and the bottom of Peterson Hill.

“We walked from the bottom of Peterson Hill all the way into St. Maries - five plus hours retracing all of our steps looking for the bag “We had no luck, so I went home and called around to anyone I could think of to get the word out,” she said. Still nothing.

The next several weeks were just more of the same. Nothing.

“After a month, we received a phone call from Gary at the ITD garage out of St. Maries. He said that while cleaning up the edge of the dike road after a car slid off he found our bag with everything in it! We were absolutely ecstatic and my kids were so happy,” George explained.

“I went the next day to pick it up at the garage. I did have a reward out so I offered him the reward. He refused and said that he was just glad he could get the bag back to my kids. We are so thankful for Gary's amazing actions and we thank him from our entire family!"

"I wouldn't have felt right taking the $100 reward," Gary said. "I was just doing my job."

Gary also credited Jason Chaffey, the younger kid on the maintenance crew he sent down the embankment to retrieve the bag — Gary had his hip replaced last spring and did not want to test it at that moment.

It was the second black bag Gary had found in as many days out near the site, although the first one was just filled with foam pellets.

Published 07-17-20