When four year old Nikki Carney lost her teddy bear at Miami International Airport 28 years ago, a kindly airport worker softened the blow by sending her a new one, and on Sunday she returned to the US gateway to thank him!

And her bear, simply known as 'Brown Ted', has since become a frequent flyer as Carney, now 32 and a dancer that regularly travels around the world for work, never leaves home without him.

The man who sent her 'Brown Ted', then MIA operations supervisor, Dickie Davis,remembers looking everywhere for her original bear after Carney's dad, Patrick, wrote to the airport in 1989 asking if anyone had found him.

And, after failing to find him, he sent her 'Brown Ted' along with a note saying that her original bear had gone to the North Pole to work with Santa.

Davis,now MIA's director of PR and digital marketing, said: "You never know the impact of everyday acts of kindness."

While Carney confirmed: "I never go anywhere without Brown Ted."