Message in a bottle

Young Chang

NEWPORT BEACH -- John Daigh was standing by the sea wall of Duffy

Electric Boat Rentals two weeks ago when he spotted a washed-up wine

bottle in the bay.

There was a message inside.

A child had written, in shaky, loopy, young person’s handwriting with

endearing misspellings: “Dear person, we are in Catalina on the other

side of the island. Buffalo are chasing us day and night. ... there’s a

big 350-foot alligator in the water. Please call our cell phone at ...”

Daigh called the number.

Samantha Kuhns, the 11-year-old sender of the imaginative message, is

elated today by the sheer fact that a connection has been made.

Sure the bottle was thrown and found in Newport Bay -- far from the

treks to different lands she was hoping for. But someone she had never

met found it and cared enough to let her know.

“She’s just so excited she can’t stand it,” said her mother, Wendy

Kuhns, of Costa Mesa.

Her mother had always told Samantha the bottles could end up anywhere:

They could swim to Santa Barbara or maybe even clear down to Mexico.

Wendy Kuhns never heard back from anyone who may have found the

messages she sent out as a young child but encouraged her daughter to

keep trying anyway.

In the past year and a half, Samantha and family friend Arthur

Arrowsmith, 39, who owns a speedboat, threw into the ocean about five

bottles with creative messages stashed inside.

They used blank white paper and simple black ink. They corked the old

wine bottles shut, wished them well and hurled them overboard. It’s a big

adventure for them, especially for Samantha.

“It’s about the excitement of wondering what people will think when

they get the messages,” Arrowsmith said.

Daigh, a manager at Duffy’s, thought the wild buffalo story was cute.

It’s the second bottle he has found. The first had traveled 1,500

miles from San Francisco to 14th Street in Newport Beach in the waves of

a storm. The sender had enclosed a chart with the longitude and latitude

of the bottle’s departure point. It had traveled for 30 days.

One of Samantha’s recent bottles had money inside. She and Arrowhead

squished in 20 $1 bills and a note urging all finders to add more money

to the collection. The instructions indicated that the last person should

donate the money to a local children’s shelter once the bottle was full.

Samantha hasn’t heard back about that bottle -- yet.

Wendy Kuhns volunteers for several shelters in the area, which may

explain Samantha’s ideas.

“Sometimes I tell her stories,” her mother said. “She might have had

concerns.”

Samantha plans to throw more stories out into the ocean, but not too

many.

“She’s kind of pollution-minded,” Wendy Kuhns said. “But she gets

terribly excited.”