Message in a Bottle Found 29 Years Later on Facebook

A message in a bottle thrown into the ocean by an 8-year-old girl was found by her 29 years later, on Facebook, after a couple found it while cleaning up a beach.

Miranda Moss Chavez was in the third grade when she put the message in the bottle and tossed it into the ocean while walking with her parents along Edisto Beach in South Carolina, CBS News reported on Tuesday.

The message was dated Sept. 26, 1988.

"I remember my mother being really insistent on writing the date on the note for me," Chavez told CBS News. "I threw it as far as I possibly could. I was afraid I would leave and it would wash back up on shore."

When Linda Humphries and her husband David were cleaning up a beach last Saturday in Sapelo Island, about 90 miles away in Georgia, they found the bottle, the Island Packet reported.

Following up on Chavez's name and address listed on the letter, Linda Humphries began some detective work. After initial leads led her to a dead end, she posted the letter on Facebook in hopes it would spread – and it did.

The letter was shared more than 100 times before Humphries was led to Chavez, per the Island Packet.

Chavez said that after Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989, she had all but forgotten about the message until she was contacted, CBS News said.

"But the moment I looked at it I knew it was mine," Chavez said. "Granted, I had forgotten about it. It had been 29 years."

Chavez told CBS News that she has already made arrangements to meet the Humphries's soon and that the story is just another example about the power of social media.

"Who would have thought?" Chavez said. "It's so awesome how something that small — no matter what you've got going on in your life — can take you back to your childhood and to some of the absolute happiest times of your life."

Chavez now has three children of her own, and said the letter brightened her day.

"It really does confirm the whole six degrees of separation theory," Chavez told the Island Packet. "I believe everything happens for a reason."

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