Sandy Message in a Bottle: Mother Reunited with Note From Dead Daughter

Superstorm Sandy produced a message in a bottle, which fell in the hands of a grieving mother who lost her daughter in 2010. The message was from her daughter.

The green plastic ginger ale bottle looked like any other piece of debris on the beach after Sandy., but it turned out to be worth much more to Mimi Fery, whose daughterr, Sidonie Fery, died in 2010. The bottled contained a silly and short message that read, "Be excellent to yourself, dude!" which Sindonie wrote when she was 10. She wrote the message on scrap paper and threw it into the waters off Long Island a dozen years and it was forgotten until workers in the village of Patchogue found the bottle and called Mimi, the Associated Press reports.

"I was just sobbing when I heard they had found it," Mimi Fery told AP. "These are very, very kind people."

Fery is planning to go to Patchogue to thank the workers and to attend a ceremony where a plaque will be dedicated in remembrance of Sidonie. The girl was 18 when she died after falling from a cliff in Switzerland while attending boarding school there.

Sidonie was an only child. Fery said she was creative and loved to write, especially poetry. She knew that the message was written by her daughter because it was a quote from Sidonie's favorite movie, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

It may be a silly quote but Fery takes it as a sign that her daughter is okay. "Be excellent to yourself, dude," Fery said, quoting the message. "It makes so much sense."

Sidonie had an adverturous side and often traveled by herself to Iran to visit relatives, starting when she was just seven. However the girl also had to deal with bullying. She was born on September 11, 1991 and was often harassed for her Persian heritage following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

"She had to deal with a lot of things," Fery said. "But she stood her ground."

The bottle, despite being in the water for several years, only traveled about a mile or two from where it was left. It was found just before Thanksgiving and was mixed with debris such as broken docks and boat pieces. Workers were able to located Fery as Sidonie had written her New York City phone number in the note.

"We opened it and it had a phone number inside, so I called the number and left a message," Brian Waldron, a Patchogue parks department employee told AP." More than three hours later, an overjoyed Fery called back crying on the phone.

The workers arranged a meeting in Patchogue so Fery could pick up the priceless note.

"I told her I felt like her daughter was looking down from heaven and wanted me to give her a call," said Waldron. "She was crying, everybody was crying."