9-year-old Trinity Ballesteros was walking along Kona Beach in Hawaii when she found an inconspicuous floating bottle.

She called her dad to retrieve the object. “When I noticed the paper, I became worried. My first thought was what if someone is really in trouble and they’re sending out an SOS,” she recounts to West Hawaii Today. “Would I even be able to help? Were they lost at sea or stuck on a deserted island? Were they even in Hawaii?”

Trinity finally opened the bottle and found a scribbled note on binder paper: “Dear finder of my message, My name is Thomas and I live in Oregon. I’m ten years old and this week I’m salmon fishing deep in the ocean. I would like to hear from you. … Please wright back, Thomas.”

Trinity hesitated a bit before responding, “My family and friends told me not to judge people before you meet them, and you never know we might become friends.”

There was a little problem though: the email address was barely perceptible. With help from her family, Trinity wrote to several potential email addresses, hoping that one of them would be Thomas.

Finally, 11-year-old Thomas Craig responded back! Apparently, Thomas found the bottle during his family’s annual fishing trip. He tossed the bottle from Winchester Bay in Oregon last year and didn’t think twice about it.

Much to his and everyone else’s surprise, little Trinity had found the bottle. “I couldn’t believe someone had found it. I was shocked. When I threw it overboard, it hit the top of my grandpa’s boat so I thought it broke and sank.” He spoke excitedly, “The chances of someone finding it seemed like a once-in-a-million type thing.”

Trinity hopes that they will finally meet one day, but for now, they are pretty happy being pen pals.

Photos by: West Hawaii Today