Message Received

EAST COUNTY — Although the letter Vijay Iyengar wrote, sealed away in a wine bottle and sent out to sea in November 2012, had a good chance of never being read, the 13-year-old thought otherwise; he knew someone else would read it some day.

And after 16 months of waiting, Vijay saw his prediction come true. The bottle traveled from a beach in Englewood to a beach in France —  more than 4,400 miles away.

On Feb. 23, at a beach near Bretagne, France, 14-year-old Rose Coheleach saw the barnacle-encrusted bottle bobbing in the water, while on vacation with her family. As her father picked up the bottle and pulled out the contents, Rose couldn’t believe what she found and the perfect condition of the letter, she said.

“It’s fantastic to have found your bottle because one regularly hear about people who find messages from abroad,” Rose wrote in a letter back to Vijay. “This time it is us!”

Kerri Dieffenwierth, who worked on the “message in a bottle” assignment with Pinnacle students as part of her master’s degree studies, presented the letter from Coheleach to Vijay March 21 at school.

With his eyes opened wide and a constant smile, Vijay promised he would respond to his new friend, as Dieffenwierth showed him on a map how far his letter traveled.

“It looks like Vijay has found himself a pen pal,” classmate Blake Schlotthauer said.

Dieffenwierth conducted the social activism project at the Pinnacle Academy because she knew some children at the school had Asperger Syndrome and had difficulty in social situations.

She wanted to show them a new way to express their emotions, and decided to conduct a creative writing workshop at the Lakewood Ranch-based school in August 2012.

Once a week for four months, eight students, ranging in age from 8 to 14 years old, wrote poems and stories to express their feelings on paper.

Dieffenwierth gave the students a classroom setting in which grammar and handwriting rules didn’t apply; she stressed creativity and honesty.

“The idea was to spark imagination,” Dieffenwierth said. “It was all about encouraging them to write what they wanted, with guidance — to just let go.”

After first struggling to inspire students to want to write, she was surprised by the group’s enthusiasm about an idea they pitched to her.

They wanted to write letters to unknown recipients and send them away in bottles.

Dieffenwierth and her co-instructor, Jim Kelly, hadn’t seen the students so excited. And, they loved the idea.

They soon found themselves traveling to stores to purchase additional items the students wanted in the bottles, such as pieces of jewelry, money and other “treasures.”

The graduate student burned the ends of each letter, along with a few fingers, accidentally, to give the letters that antique look — an element important to the students.

After about four weeks of writing letters and putting together the contents of the bottles, the students trusted Dieffenwierth to send their hard work away.

She threw the bottles into the ocean from Stump Pass in Englewood in November 2012.

Besides Iyengar’s bottle, two other bottles were found in Palm Beach in December 2012, about a month after they were sent out.

Letter from Rose:
Dear Vijay
My name is Rose, I’m a 14 years old French girl, and I live in Paris.

I’m currently on holiday in “Bretagne” which is the western part of France (you see the “nose” of France).

We spotted your bottle while we were walking alongside the beach on Sunday 23 th February 2014. We brought it back home where we opened it. Your letter was in perfect shape.

It’s fantastic to have found your Bottle because one regularly hear about people who find messages from abroad , which have travelled a Long way. This Time it is us !

How funny !

Please write me back.

Rose Coheleach

Contact Amanda Sebastiano at [email protected].