Samantha Holmes, 20, was writing a paper for her criminology class last week when her dad walked in. “Close your eyes and reach your hand in here,” Pat Holmes told her. She put her hand into her dad’s gym bag and pulled out a stuffed animal she’d given him when she was two years old.

“You still have it!” she said in disbelief. She’d given it to him 18 years ago to have at work if he missed her. He’s been shuttling it to and from his law office ever since. Overwhelmed, she took a picture and posted it on social media. She added this note: “When I was two I gave my Dad a stuffed animal to keep in his work bag so that if he ever missed me he could think of me. Eighteen years later, my Dad has just informed me he still brings my animal to work with him every day,” she wrote on Reddit.

Then she found out he also would tuck it in his luggage and bring it on business trips. “I’ve taken it to work every single day I’ve gone to work,” Holmes, 56, said in an interview. “I don’t like to be away from the kids,” he said. “I think of it as a part of them being with me.”

He ended up showing it to his daughter because he was switching to a new gym bag. He thought it was a good time to tell her. “He’s always been very sweet like that,” she said. “You have good days and bad days,” he said. “But if you don’t have family, you have nothing else.” For all those reasons, he said, he will continue to take the animal to work. His daughter thinks that’s pretty cool. “You hear a lot of people don’t have a close relationship with their dads, or their dads aren’t really expressive,” Samantha Holmes said. “I’m really grateful for how close we are.”

Allison Klein, “This dad has been bringing his daughter’s stuffed animal to work for 18 years. And she just found out.” The Washington Post (4-3-18)