A Washington teenager said she was stunned after a Build-A-Bear store manager allegedly refused to print the name of slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on her plush toy’s birth certificate.
Evi McCormick, 16, told Seattle’s KING5 that the incident happened Sept. 26 at the Build-A-Bear Workshop inside Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, Washington.
McCormick said she and her friends were at the mall when she decided to make a bear in honor of the Turning Point USA founder, who was assassinated last month. The idea has been trending on TikTok.
“I was just mesmerized and captivated that he could speak with such elegance,” McCormick said in the report. “He was a role model.”
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According to McCormick, after she finished making the custom bear, an employee refused to print Kirk’s name on its certificate.
Printing a birth certificate has long been part of the store’s in-person experience, allowing customers to name their new toy.
“She just didn’t agree with it. She didn’t support it, and she told me, ‘We’re not doing this,’ folded it up in a force and threw it away,” McCormick told KING5.
The teen said she was so rattled that she handed her card to a friend, Kailie Lang, to pay for the bear and walked away.
“It definitely made us all very uncomfortable,” Lang recalled.
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After another store manager at the Tukwila location declined to comment to the local news outlet, a customer service representative at Build-A-Bear’s corporate office told KING5 the matter was being handled internally.
Amber McCormick, Evi’s mother, said she also spoke with someone at corporate headquarters for nearly an hour and was offered a $20 gift card for the poor customer service.
Days later, the company reached out to McCormick again to apologize and admitted the incident should not have happened.
She said Build-A-Bear told her they would train employees in the Seattle area to avoid bringing politics into the workplace.
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“She said that their goal is to try to prevent this sort of situation from happening to anybody else,” McCormick said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Build-A-Bear for additional comment.
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