CORTEZ, Fla. (SNN) It started out as a typical day on Florida’s Cortez Beach but then one family vacationing from Michigan got a surprise in the surf.

“I was just walking and I was looking for sand dollars, shells and shark teeth,” said Josie Law, an 11-year-old visiting from Michigan. “Then I came across this bottle, and I thought it was just a piece of trash. I picked it up and I saw that it was a note and a bottle, so I ran to my mom and I showed her it.”

Inside was a faded, handwritten note with a message and a phone number. Josie and mother Paris Hoisington did what anyone would do: They texted the number.

And they got a response a few hours later.

It turns out that on the other end of the message was a brother and sister in Hawaii. They say they dropped the bottle into the Pacific Ocean near Oahu back in 2018, thinking nobody would actually find it.

“She was in disbelief like we were,” Hoisington said. “Believe it or not, her and her little brother had found a message in a bottle when they were kids, so that’s why they decided to do it.” 

That message traveled more than 4,600 miles over the span of eight years.

“I ironically bought bottles for my kids to send messages in a bottle, and literally the day before we sent them off, my daughter found this one,” Hoisington said. “It was just incredible and we will remember it forever.”