If you thought it was amazing that the $700 million,100,000-member Vantage Credit Union in Bridgeton, Mo., used Facebook to help amember retrieve $1,000 cash lost on vacation in New York, then getready for another social media miracle.

The $294 million Linn Area Credit Union in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is receivingrecognition from around the world for helping to reunite a littleboy and his stuffed monkey, which had been lost July 1 atBalloon Glow, a community event Linn Area CU has sponsored for 15years.

“We knew it would be a challenge to find the owner because morethan 15,000 people attended this year's Balloon Glow, but we weredetermined because we all realized that losing a cherished itemcould be devastating to a child,” said Tara Bross, a marketingspecialist at the 24,000-member Linn Area CU, which won the CUNAMarketing and Business Development Council's 2011 Diamond Award.

Bross posted a photo of the monkey on Linn Area CU's Facebookpage with a plea to help find its “bestie.”

Within a day, she said, the posting had been shared more than1,000 times and viewed by more than 50,000 people. To add to thefun, she created a Facebook album titled “MonkeyBusiness” to chronicle the stuffed animal's activities invarious departments at Linn Area CU.

The family whose child had lost the monkey had also posted a picof the stuffed animal on Facebook. Bross said a friend of thefamily who had seen both postings helped to make theconnection.

On July 6, the monkey, named “Kathy” for a grandmother inEngland, was reunited with the 3-year-old boy from CedarRapids. A video of the happy reunion was also posted on thecredit union's site and local media reported on the story.

Although the boy's family does not belong to Linn Area CU, Brosssaid, the group effort involved in this fun project helped toreinforce the credit union's motto: “We are Family.”

“We didn't do it because they were members or notmembers,” she said. “This is just who we are. We live by our motto.Now more than 100,000 people have viewed the pic and we've gottennice comments from all across the country and even England. Notonly did we reinforce our relationship with our members, but weshowed the entire world what it is like to pull together as acommunity. We're all about family at Linn Area Credit Union.”