California Boy Finds a 27-Year-Old Message in a Bottle

Nearly 30 years ago, an elementary school student in Sacramento, California, wrote a letter, shoved it into an empty glass seltzer bottle, and tossed it into a neighboring body of water. In December, the mysterious missive sparked the curiosity of another young boy, who found the bottle near a river in Mendocino, California.

“Hi—My name is Chris. I am 10 yrs old + in the 5th grade,” the note read. “Call me when you find this to let me know where it floated to shore.” Chris also included his phone number, along with the date: September 5, 1988.

According to Inside Edition, 5-year-old Ryder Goggin and his mother, Heather Baird, were out walking when they discovered the bottle in the sand. Ryder was apparently “hoping it was a treasure map,” Baird told the news show. Instead, they found Chris’s perfectly preserved note tucked inside a plastic bag.

Ryder and his mother tried to honor the sender's wishes. They dialed the attached number, but found that it had been disconnected. Public records revealed that it had once been the phone line of a man named Cliff Farnsworth in 1981. However, the mother-son duo didn’t find any other documents yielding clues about Farnsworth’s identity or whereabouts.

Still, Ryder and his mom weren’t deterred, and hope to track down Chris, who would now be in his thirties. “I’d love to know where his life took him, and the circumstances behind him putting the bottle in the water,” Baird said.

All images courtesy of YouTube.

[h/t Inside Edition, New York Daily News]