BRADENTON BEACH, Fla. — A tiny bottle with a message inside traveled from Hawaii in ocean currents before being washed ashore in Bradenton Beach on Sunday and found by a girl visiting from Michigan.
“It was in this tiny little glass bottle with cute little origami birds,” said Paris Hoisington, 31. “She was so surprised. Came running right towards me on the beach.”
Hoisington said it’s every kid’s dream to find a message in a bottle at the beach. Her daughter, Josie Law, 11, said at first she thought it was a piece of trash floating in the water.
“Then I saw the note inside,” she said. “I was like, let me grab this. This is cool.”
The note inside the tiny bottle reads: ‘Hello people who found this, you will be happy that you found this. Why? Cause you will know me with this number.’
Hoisington said she texted the phone number and got a response.
“’My brother and I made that when I was younger,’” she said the text read. “’We actually live in Hawaii.’ And I said, ‘You’re kidding.’”
Payton Hollenbeck, 21, said she and her younger brother Elias, tossed that message in a bottle into the ocean at Kaena Point in Oahu 8 years ago. It travelled more than 4,600 miles before reaching the Florida shoreline.
“To think of how many bodies of water it went through,” said Hoisington. “It’s truly amazing what little tiny objects can go places in the world and connect to people from each other side of the world.”
The Michigan mom said the family had already planned to release 3 bottles before returning home and hope to get a response someday.
“We left our phone number on one,” Hoisington said. “We can’t wait to see what happens.”
Hollenbeck said she’s familiar with that cycle because the only reason she threw a message in a bottle into the ocean is because she had previously found one as a kid.
