Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken and his deputies found out that some of the sweetest things in life arrive by mail.
Gooey ones, too.
Mail call at the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office this week included two “original South City recipe” gooey cakes shipped from McArthur’s Bakery in St. Louis where their website describes them as “award winning and famous.”
There was also a letter.
All came from the heart of a boy who discovered someone very important in his life was missing when his family headed back to St. Louis from their vacation Alta’s Grand Targhee resort last March.
His name is “Dog.” Cuddly, brown, maybe 8-inches long — and stuffed.
“It’s been a year since you saved my Dog on our trip home,” William Kay, 8, wrote the department. “I wanted to say THANK YOU! Dog is my most favorite possession. He means so much to me, and I sleep with him every night.”
Bakken said he received a call from William’s father a year ago that informed him that as the family neared the end of their spring vacation trip, they discovered William was missing his stuffed animal, Dog.
Bill and Christina Kay told Cowboy State Daily last year that they knew the search might be futile. They had stopped just east of Creston Junction and grabbed lunches out of a cooler and because of the high winds there, believed it may have blown somewhere in the vicinity.
They didn't realize Dog was missing until they stopped in Hays, Kansas.
Bill Kay sent Bakken a screen shot on Google maps of where he thought Dog could have been left behind during a pit stop.
Search Effort
Bakken alerted his dispatcher Taylor Miller about the need for a search-and-rescue mission. Miller radioed Deputy Tyler Christen and Christen drove out to the area and within 10 minutes located Dog caught in some sagebrush along a borrow ditch.
“Once we got Dog rescued, we gave him some sheriff’s patches and water bottles and stuff and shipped him back to St. Louis,” Bakken said.
The letter and cakes this week were totally unexpected. The sheriff said the package was “a pretty neat thing to find in the mail.”
Since Bakken is training for a 100-mile ultramarathon in June to raise funds for his department, he told his staff he “probably shouldn’t be eating cake.”
He opened them up for everyone else.
“I don’t think they lasted very long because they looked delicious,” he said.
Taking time to help a young dog lover and his family is something the department enjoyed doing, Bakken said. Most encounters they have with the public involve a bad day or someone being arrested and going to jail. He said it was “fun” to help travelers passing through the state.
“For that kid, that’s a big deal,” he said. “It’s important for kids and families to see law enforcement from a little different perspective rather than just taking someone to jail or writing them a ticket.”
William Kay wrote that he wanted to thank the sheriff and his department for their service provided to him and his family.
“When I found out that he was missing I thought I’d never see him again,” he wrote. “Because of you all, he’s still in my arms.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
