Cape Coral Teen makes Teddy Bears of Fallen police officers’ uniforms, battles through Hate Comments and COVID-19
Megan O’Grady remembers sitting in front of the television screen at 14 years old, watching in horror as the she surfed through news channels with headlines blaring that five police officers were killed in Dallas, Texas in 2016. Her father’s Police Department commendations hung on the walls around her, reminding O’Grady that the reality of her father’s endangerment was very real. As the daughter of a police officer, O’Grady felt dejected and fearful of the events happening in Texas.
“My dad is a local police officer in Cape Coral. After the attack on Dallas in 2016, where five officers were ambushed and killed, I decided that I wanted to do something for the families to help them cope, because that’s just something I never wanted to go through,” O’ Grady said.
In July of 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson shot five dead five officers and injured nine others after an ambush in Texas. The shooting happened at the end of a protest against the police killings. The news spread across the nation, reaching thousands of families of law enforcement officers.
“It definitely hit close to home,” O’ Grady said. “It could have happened to my dad.”
“For years, we never really worried about him [Officer O’Grady] going off to work,” Susan O’Grady, Megan O’Grady’s mom, said. “There’s always a fear, a little bit, but after what happened in Ferguson, it became very real to us because there were police officers who were just being targeted.”
Susan O’Grady said that she and her family always feared of Officer O’Grady’s risk while at work, but as soon as the attacks in Dallas, their fear grew.
“There was always the threat that he could be on a call and something could happen, but that’s different than people targeting them. That became really scary,” she said.
On that day, O’Grady decided she was going to take action to help the families of fallen police officers.
O’Grady took her sowing kit and began searching through YouTube videos to learn how to sew. With the help of her family, O’Grady started her non-profit organization, Blue Line Bears, where she hand-sewed uniforms of officers killed in the line of duty, made them into bears, and delivered them to the fallen officer’s families.
Megan O’ Grady’s father, CCPD Master Sargent Patrick O’Grady, said that requests for the bears picked up quickly.
“We get requests just about every day,” Sargent O’Grady said. “It doesn’t seem like there was going to be an end in sight. Plus, officers getting killed in an alarming rate as well. So, we’ll make bears for anybody who requests them.”
Megan O’Grady said she was dedicated to helping the children of fallen law enforcement officers cope with the devastating loss of a parent. She said that she, like many children of law enforcement officers, has grown up realizing that their parent’s life is at risk every day they go to work. Because of that, O’Grady said she ensures that Blue Line Bears will provide a lasting keepsake to help keep the officer’s memory alive.
“Children of officers killed in the line of duty are oftentimes young, perhaps too young to remember the parent who died. For those children, a bear from Blue Line Bears will provide a tangible reminder that their loved one will always be with them,” the organization’s website said.
After being contacted by a family of a fallen officer or reaching out to a police department, O’Grady will send the information to get the uniform shirts of the officer. Once the uniform shirts are delivered to Cape Coral Police Department, O’Grady picks them up, takes pictures of it, posts it on Facebook, and begins sowing the bears.
“We cut the shirts up into different pieces and sew them together to the parts of the bear. We do an embroidery that has a shield on the front of the bear with the name and number of the officer,” O’Grady said.
O’Grady embroiders a Blue Line Bears tag with the officer’s name and end-of-watch date. She then stuffs the bear and assembles it together. As soon as she finishes sowing the bears, she puts a medal of St. Michael, the Catholic patron saint of police officers and military personnel, around the bear’s neck, gets the bear blessed by a priest, and mails it to the families. The Blue Line Bears organization operates on donations to operate and cover production expenses and shipping.
“We’re obviously very, very proud of her,” Susan O’Grady said.
“I’ll be honest, I, we didn’t expect it to get this big this fast. It was supposed to be like maybe 30 bears a year,” Sargent O’Grady said.
Fast forward to 2020–2021, O’Grady and her family has delivered over 900 custom, hand-sewn bears that have been delivered throughout the United States, Canada, and even Afghanistan. She has been featured in the reports of national news networks like Fox and Friends and Today, and has received multiple awards like The Fort Myers’ News-Press Hero of the year and eWomen Network’s Humanitarian-of-the-Year Award, among many.
However, things took a turn in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and Blue Line Bears began receiving hate comments from all around social media.
On May 25th of 2020, Former Officer Derek Michael Chauvin was charged with murder after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Video showed Chauvin kneeling on the neck of Floyd for nearly nine minutes.
After this occurred, O’Grady received tons of hate comments aimed at her non-profit organization. 15 days after the death of George Floyd, O’Grady posted on Facebook to address the hate comments.
“The comments were positive in the beginning until we got hundreds of comments wanting my dad dead and saying they hope he gets shot in the face,” said O’Grady in the Facebook post posted on June of 2020. “I received hate comment after hate comment, most along the lines of ‘I hope your dad is the next Officer you make a bear for.’ The hate comments never truly disappeared, but they became less frequent until these past couple of weeks.”
She said she has been attacked on her personal social media by people, even her own classmates. Because of that, O’Grady and her family felt like they needed to remove the Blue Line Bears logo wrapping of her Jeep used to deliver bears in fear of their safety.
“I watched the increase in police injuries in New York and wondered if those were officers I’ve given a patch to. I scrolled through social media posts to be met with nothing but anti-police rants. My heart broke more and more every day,” she continued to say in the post. “I have stayed silent until now, but I’m not doing that anymore. These people can troll and hate on my dad and me, but all they’re doing is fueling the fire that will make Blue Line Bears more and more successful. I will not stand down.”
O’Grady said that after her organization does not line up to the action of the officers, and her organization is focused on offering support to families of fallen officers.
“Our organization doesn’t stand by the actions of a couple of bad cops, we stand by the families who have lost someone, and the police officers who have done the right thing and stand for the right thing.”
“It’s really easy sometimes when you see stuff on the news to villainize a group of people,” said Susan O’Grady. “I feel like that’s happened with police officers.”
Even with the hate comments, COVID-19 is also making Megan’s job in the organization more difficult. Megan O’Grady said that in 2020 and 2021, Blue Line Bears has had more demand for bears because of COVID-19.
“There’s been a bigger demand in 2020-2021 because a lot of officers have been passing because of COVID,” She said. Megan O’Grady said that while officers have normal risk like gunfire, car crashes, there is a whole second factor coming in.
“And it’s COVID. It’s something that we didn’t expect that would be a big deal,” she said.
Because of COVID-19, she said it is harder to deliver the bears in person. It is also harder for her get help from volunteers due to the coronavirus.
“It’s actually all on us now,” O’Grady said.
Though COVID-19 and moving to college impacted how the organization functions, O’Grady said she and her family still is unwavering in the cause.
“I do more administrative stuff now, and my family back at home does the physical making of bears. It’s proven to be hard for both of us,” she said. “It’s been difficult for both of us, because there’s a learning curve with both parts.”
Still, O’Grady is adamant about her cause. In February of 2021, she opened up a Blue Line Bears Shop in Cape Coral to have a location where people can volunteer in making the bears, learn more about Blue Line Bears, and buy the organization’s merchandise.
Susan O’Grady said she hopes that that people will begin to see the human side of officers through the Blue Line Bears project.
“I think one of the things that I would hope that would come out of this project that Megan has taken on is that people can start to see like the human side of that,” she said. “I feel like we’ve almost become a society where we don’t listen to people and don’t talk people and don’t realize one another’s humanity. That would be the thing I would hope, if anything could come out of this. That would be it.”
“I think it feels pretty good. Knowing that like, I’m out here trying to do something positive about all this negative energy out there,” O’Grady said.
