When Jessica Crawford was a child, her teddy bear Whitey was always there by her side, quick to cheer her up.
"Anytime I cried, I ran to Whitey," Crawford told Inside Edition earlier this month. "He soaked up a lot of tears."
But as Crawford grew older, Whitey, too, began to age: He lost his nose, his eyes fell out and a dog chewed off his ear.
In terrible shape, the beloved toy -- whose head was eventually ripped off as well -- was packed away and, for years, he remained destroyed and out of sight.
But this Christmas, Crawford's fiancé decided to surprise her by resurrecting the old teddy bear -- something that proved to be no easy feat.
According to ABC affiliate KGO-TV, Vas Alli, who proposed to Crawford on Christmas Eve in 2012, spent a month looking at thousands of vintage teddy bears online, searching for clues as to how he might reconstruct Whitey.
Alli then brought the toy to a doll and teddy bear hospital in New Jersey, where Whitey was painstakingly put back together again.
In the video above, which was posted online on Jan. 14 and has gone viral this week, Alli presents the gift-wrapped Whitey to his unsuspecting fiancée.
Her reaction is simply priceless.
"Oh my God, are you serious?" Crawford exclaims in the video, burying her stunned face into the teddy bear, tears falling. "I smelled him and knew exactly what it was."
Crawford told Inside Edition that seeing Whitey whole and undamaged "was a gift I thought I could never get back."
Watch the heart-squeezing reunion in the video above.
Related
Before You Go
