Message in a bottle found almost 7 years later and nearly 5,000 miles away
HONOLULU (KHNL/Gray News) - Nearly seven years ago, a young teenager on Oahu and her brother tossed a sealed bottle into the ocean with a simple message on it.
Payton Hollenbeck said she had forgotten all about it until this week, when it was found thousands of miles away in Florida.
“I got a screenshot from a random number. I was like, ‘Oh, what is this about?’ And it was a piece of paper,” she said. “I knew it was mine because it had the paper cranes, and my brother and I had an obsession with making paper cranes.”
The now 21-year-old Hollenbeck recalled her younger brother Elias writing the message and putting her phone number — a number she hasn’t changed.
Together, they tossed it into the water at Kaena Point on Aug. 17, 2018.
“I was just shocked. It is pretty cool. I texted them back, too,” Hollenbeck said.
On the other side of the text conversation was Paris Hoisington from Michigan. She was vacationing with her family in Florida when her daughter Josie found the bottle at Bradenton Beach, some 4,700 miles away from Oahu.
“I was walking and then the waves were coming and the bottle almost went, but I grabbed it really fast,” Josie told Bay News 9.
The message inside the bottle read: “Hello, people who found this. You will be happy that you found this. Why? Cause you will know me with this number.”
The brother and sister included the phone number, date and origami cranes.
Hollenbeck said she was inspired to send out a message after she found one herself a while back.
“I just doing it because I had been walking on the beach at my favorite surf spot, and I had seen a message in a bottle. There was no phone number, but my brother and I were like, ‘Oh, we should just go make one ourselves for fun,’” she said.
And fun it was. Hollenbeck says she never imagined it would be found and lead to such attention.
Nowadays, she’s more concerned about ocean pollution and encourages others to be more mindful and take care of both land and sea.
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