On Saturday the 13th, about 20 students and volunteers turned up at Marathon High School to participate in the international Coastal Cleanup. (Last year, approximate 648,000 volunteers in 92 countries picked up about 12 million pounds of trash.) The kids found tons of garbage — plastic and glass bottles, buckets and buoys — and in return for bagging them up received some special credit from Marathon High School teacher Lynn Cox and Marathon Middle School Roxanne Skaggs. But Alexandra Pabon Mixon found something special.
“I just picked up this bottle and was about ready to throw it away when I noticed there was paper in it,” she said.
Alexandra held on to it. Back at the rendezvous point, no one had a corkscrew to unseal the bottle, so she flung it to the ground, breaking off the neck. Inside there were two pieces of paper.
“Can You be MY Pen Pal if you respond Pleles Call 8122078654,” the note read, in childish handwriting, accompanied by drawings on the front and back of the a torn piece of manila folder with a red wine stain. The second piece of paper says, “Pleles call me!” with a smiley face.
Alexandra called the number, but it’s been disconnected … much to her dismay.
“I was disappointed,” she said, adding that the area code is from New Albany, Indiana.
If you have any information about this mysterious note, or its young author, call The Weekly at 305-743-0844.
In addition to the landside activities, a group of divers from A Deep Blue Dive Center on Key Colony Beach helped to clean up Marathon’s premier shipwreck, the Thunderbolt. Working in depths exceeding 100 feet, the group of 23 volunteers from various organizations removed more than 500 pounds of junk including monofilament line, two anchors, one barge tire and a rogue crab trap.
Editor Sara Matthis thinks community journalism is important, but not serious; likes small and weird children (she has two); prefers target practice with a zombie rat poster; and looks best with saltwater dreads. Occasionally she tortures herself with sprint-distance triathlons, but only if she has a good chance of beating her sister.
