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Social media campaign cracks missing Windsor doll case

Addison Drake and her doll Little Addison
Addison Drake and her doll Little Addison

A Canadian child’s doll will soon be on her way back from a big adventure thanks to a viral social media campaign by staff at the Arnold Mackinac Island Ferry and Mackinac Island Tourism in Michigan.

Their #HelpDollyHome social media campaign was a success, leading ferry marketing manager Heather Tamlyn to Addison Drake, a three-year-old girl from Windsor, Ont., who had lost her doll while on a family vacation to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan in mid-July.

Addison's doll, named Little Addison, was purchased specifically to keep her company on trips and had already been to Chicago before her Michigan adventure. Shuttle driver Dan Reynolds noticed the doll left behind on the Mackinac Island ferry after a docking, and it rode around on Reynolds’ dashboard for a day or so after he was unable to find Little Addison's owner in the parking lot, Tamlyn said. After a few days in the ticket office the doll, renamed Dolly by ferry employees found her way to the lost and found in Tamlyn's office.

Little Addison on Mackinac Island Ferry
Little Addison on Mackinac Island Ferry

A child's doll sitting among the usual lost items like sweatshirts and hats stuck out to Tamlyn, and she decided to try to find Dolly's owner.

"I thought of my daughter," she tells Yahoo Canada News, "and a little friend like that lost and a little girl out there somewhere."

The ferry's #HelpDollyHome campaign began and the interest was immediate — its first Facebook post was seen by more than one million views on the site, she said, and the individual posts using that hashtag and #DollysMIadventure were shared upwards of 12,000 times each.

"It's been all over the world," said Tamlyn, adding there have been messages about Dolly's adventure from as far away as Australia, including from people offering to adopt the doll if her owner wasn’t found.

Most people can identify with losing a beloved toy, whether it's their own or their child's, and Tamlyn thinks that's why Dolly's tale spread so far and resonated with so many people.

"Any of us who have kids know what we would go through to get something like that back," she said. Those efforts included some extra adventures for the doll, which has been photographed meeting Miss Michigan, drinking a kiddie cocktail on the Isle Royale Queen III and helping out the Mackinac Marine Rescue crew.

Tamlyn and others on Mackinac Island documented the doll's local travels at #DollysMIadventure, and those two hashtags found their way to Addison’s mother Meg Drake.

Little Addison with Miss Michigan
Little Addison with Miss Michigan

She isn't an avid Facebook user, Drake tells Yahoo Canada News, but she happened to be catching up on the site on Sunday.

"I randomly came across a posting from the Arnold Ferry Line and was blown away," she said. "The fact that these people not only found the doll and knew a child would be missing it, but also went to extreme lengths to make sure the doll found her owner was absolutely heartwarming."

Drake got in touch with Tamlyn, providing photos of Addison and Little Addison taken before the doll went missing.

She had actually told Addison that her doll was extending her holiday in Michigan when they first realized that Little Addison was missing.

"The most amazing part of the story is that Little Addison actually did continue on vacation," she said.

Now that Dolly's real name and rightful owner have been discovered, the team at Mackinac Island is working to bring her home to Addison planned for Friday.

Little Addison will be handed off by a ferry representative to a reporter in Michigan, Drake said, who will then meet the Drakes on a hike in Windsor and give the doll back to Addison in person.

"Once we get her back to her person, she'll have this whole story to tell her about what she did while she was away," Tamlyn said.