Elana Duffy - Operation Bruin Escape and Rescue (BEAR)

 

 

So, there I was 25,000ft in the air on my way to some vacation with friends that I hadn't seen in ages in Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands, trip of a lifetime. They pass out the customs forms. I reach into my bag searching for a pen. But what I didn't realize until that very moment, is that I had forgotten a critical piece of my standard operating equipment. 

 

Paddington D Bear was purchased on a business trip to London that my father had taken while my mother was pregnant with me. He had been to every state my family went on vacation. He went with me to space camp, he went with me to college, he went to six continents, he went to the top of four mountains, he has been through every friendship, every breakup that I have endured. 

 

Even when I joined the army, he went with me then too. And when I deployed, he went with me to Afghanistan and to Iraq and rode on every convoy that I went on right in my pocket. He survived the explosions with me. He went with me to the surgeries that I got to have afterwards. And he was just always there. He was my comfort. He was what was going to get me through whatever I had to get through except right now, because right now, he was sitting next to my door, because I had to get up for a Zero Dark Thirty flight, and I had just walked right by him. And so, now, I am 32 years old, a decade of decorated military service, two engineering degrees, crying my eyes out in public over a teddy bear. 

 

Now, let me explain a little something about Paddington, is that he showed his age. He is not a pretty bear by any means. He has lost all of his fuzz. He is on ear set three, foot set two and a half. His beans are scattered all over the world. What am I supposed to do? [audience laughter] But oh, no, when I landed, I had a plan because I'm not going to sit here and cry over my bear and not come up with something to do. 

 

So, the first thing I did when we touched down was I called home and said, “Look, you take that bear, you go to FedEx, you put that bear in a box and you tell them very specifically, if he can get here in a week, you send it to location one. If he gets here a couple days after, send him to location two and so on down the line.” I then visited each and every hotel that we were going to be going to and said, “If a box arrives for me, please hang on to it in case I'm not here, I will come back and get this. It is critical.” Our schedule was very tight. I needed to make this whole thing foolproof. 

 

So, the next week, I spent climbing mountains, wandering around, exploring the cities. And as much fun as we were having every single night, I still went back to the hotel and checked, where was the box. By the time we left for the Galápagos, I saw the box had made its way to Ecuador. It was sitting in customs. Paddington was in the country. [audience laughter] I could finally relax. As soon as we got back from the islands for our last day in Quito, I checked. We hadn't even gotten to the hotel yet. I'm burning up data minutes to look and see where is Paddington. 

 

We saw where he was. We diverted the cab. My friends had piled in with me. They were super jazzed about this reunion we were about to have. I get out, I go into the front desk of the hotel where the box said, it was. And the hotel clerk was like, “Oh no, we don't have a box for you.” “Can you check again?” He checks again, “No, there's no box. There's no box at the desk. There's no box in the storeroom.” No one even has a clue where the box might be. Now, I'm 32 years and two more weeks older and crying again. 

 

I get back into the cab, and I grab my friend's phone and call FedEx, “What have you done with my bear?” The FedEx agent explains, “Ecuador has a major drug problem. As it turns out, you can't accept a package on behalf of someone else, regardless if you are a hotel clerk or anything else, unless the person is there to take it off your hands.” No one really knows about this law, because I guess not a whole lot of people are emergency shipping internationally teddy bears. But that's me. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I am desperate. I'm talking to the agent and she's like, “Look, there's something that we can do here. There's only one storage facility for this type of package in the entire country of Ecuador.” “Where is it?” “Oh, it's in Guayaquil. Are you near Guayaquil?” “No, I'm in Quito.” Quito is several hundred miles away. I have 24 hours left in this on land here and I've got to report back to my army unit back home. Well, they said that you have to come in person to pick up the package. And so, I had to go home empty handed and completely devastated. 

 

I returned to work the next day. I was the lead non-commissioned officer for my section at an elite military unit of investigators and interrogators and all of these people with long and storied careers and that they couldn't tell you a thing about if you asked them. But they were also mostly men, almost all of them 10 or more years my senior. And all of them extremely well-trained operatives of some sort. So, here, essentially, I was alone. At least in Ecuador, I had my friends with me, supporting my drive to get my teddy bear to come home. But here, I'm not crying on any of these guys shoulders, that's for sure. In the military, women are already looked at as a little too emotional, a little too much, a little weaker. And so, you have to prove yourself every single day that you are even tougher than the guy sitting next to you. But you know what? I steeled my resolve. As far as I saw it, this was a hostage crisis. [audience laughter] And wouldn't you know it, I had done a stint in hostage rescue a couple years back. I knew exactly what I needed to do. 

 

So, for the next month, from a desk in a more secluded office away from prying eyes, I contacted FedEx every single day. I befriended this FedEx agent who I now saw as my sole ally. She too became emotionally invested in getting Paddington back, [audience laughter] including activating her entire chain all the way through the chief of the international shipping division at FedEx [audience laughter] concerned about the whereabouts of this bear. But the only people who didn't seem to care that much was the customs office in Ecuador. They simply could not be convinced that someone would go through all this trouble for a beaten-up little bear unless, of course, there was some contraband shoved inside his beans. 

 

Oh, and by the way, packages can only be held in this facility for 45 days. So, I was sitting at my desk when the email arrived, “Come to Guayaquil in the next week or the box and its contents will be incinerated.” Looks like Ecuador had issued their ransom note. [audience laughter] This is the first time that I'm sitting there and I realize that I am out of options. I have no more leave. I just burned it. I had no way to get down there. I had nothing. My friend, my comfort, my companion was about to be destroyed and there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. 

 

At that exact moment, a coworker walked in. She happened to be the only other female operator in my section and just wanted to know where I was one of our other projects. And there was no quick wiping of my face and slapping a smile on or being that gruff NCO. And she asked me, “Okay, what's wrong?” I look at her and in rush, the whole story just tumbles out that my teddy bear is in Ecuador, and is about to be thrown into an incinerator and there's absolutely nothing I can do and I'm at a total loss. And then, I shut my mouth super quick and waited for her to laugh at me. She considered me for a moment, nodded and said, “Okay, come, follow me.” Oh, boy. 

 

We're weaving through all of the other desks. Of course, she worked in the back of the room. And as we're going, she's just handpicking people one by one until there is about five people in our little entourage following behind. As we get back to her desk, she looks at me, so I can mumble my story and stare at the floor. Well, the room had gone completely silent. And then, all of a sudden, it was the biggest hive of activity. And everyone had a suggestion. Everyone had someone to call. The people that she had picked all had experienced in South America. Someone knew someone who knew somebody else who owed them a favor at the last government office that they have been to. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

We were taking this hostage crisis and we were turning this into an international incident. [audience laughter] So, after some calls between three embassies, five customs control officers in two different countries and a personal visit in South America from one old friend to another, Paddington was finally released from Ecuadorian customs- [audience cheers and applause] -less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to be incinerated. [audience laughter] So, when the box arrived, it was battered, travel stained, looked like it had been through way more than anything that I had seen in my deployments. [audience laughter] I tore it open. I pulled Paddington into daylight for the first time in two months. My fingers fell into this long slit that someone had cut in his back to check for contraband. But someone at US customs had lovingly put his spilled beans back into him and then made a little diaper out of customs tape, [audience laughter] so that he could retain them for the rest of his little journey. [audience laughter] I snapped a little proof of life photo of him popping out of the box [audience laughter] so that I could send it back to my coworkers. And they, of course, forwarded it on to all of the other people at all of these embassies and so forth. I'm getting emails from the FedEx agents. ,

 

Even when I went back to the office, the little proof of life photo had been printed out and put up on the wall next to this free Paddington poster that we had made [audience laughter] as we're waiting for him to be shipped home. It seemed impossible to me throughout this whole thing that I'm just a sad army NCO with a careworn teddy bear and yet all of these people had jumped at the chance to help rescue him. 

 

And then, one coworker walked up to me and showed me a picture that he had carried with him in his wallet since high school. And another one pointed to a little trinket that was on his desk that had been on every military mission he'd been on. Another one of the embassy agents had sent along a picture of his own teddy bear, which sat on a shelf behind him in a place of honor at the embassy that I now worked. And I realized, as tough and independent and strong as we all make ourselves out to be, everyone has a Paddington.