[November 25, 2009] Message in a bottle shows up 24 years later Tweet Nov 25, 2009 (The Philadelphia Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A weekend stay in Ocean City, N.J., awaits the woman -- if she can be found -- who put a message in a two-liter soda bottle tossed off a pier there in 1985. The green bottle, launched as part of a contest, was found by a worker during a clean up at a North Carolina resort after last week's nor'easter. The note inside, illustrated with a sketch of a fish-shaped bottle, bears the name of a Heidi Kay Werstler, whose address was "Trembler's Trailer Park, PA." The contest promised a prize to the person whose note went the farthest. As of early afternoon, no word from Heidi Kay. "We don't know anything about the person whose name is on there," said city spokesman Mark Soifer. Ignore reports she won a box of saltwater taffy. "I was joking around," Soifer said. "They'll get a vacation in Ocean City if we can find out who it is, if we can track them down." A three-day stay at "one of the motels," he said. Messages left for several Heidi Werstlers -- found through a database and Facebook -- have gone unreturned. People provided their own bottles -- or jars -- for the 1985 contest, filled out the entry forms and put them inside. They went into the Atlantic from the Music Pier at Moorlyn Terrace and the Boardwalk, Soifer said. The note asked the finder to call the number of the Ocean City public relations department. Only one other bottle showed up -- in Virginia or Maryland, probably in the early '90s, he said. That person never came forward. The newly found bottle turned up at the Sanderling Resort & Spa in Duck on North Carolina's Outer Banks. ------ Contact staff Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or [email protected]. To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com/inquirer. Copyright (c) 2009, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]