“It was really quick, believe it or not,” said Emma Starr, the Key West woman who tracked down Olivia Brooks after reading the “Message in a Bottle” story on keysweekly.com. Starr, who is an artist and also the board secretary of the Key West Art & Historical Society, said she was reading another article on the newspaper’s website, when she stumbled across this one. “Anything with ‘mystery’ in the title is going to get me. I love cold cases and that’s why I jumped down the rabbit hole, searching for Olivia.”
Starr has experience tracking down long-lost relatives for her own personal genealogical research. She said she Googled Brooks’ name, and added the U.K. county of Essex.
“On the first page of results, I found a man with the same last name, from the same county, who posted a tweet about his young niece starting a balloon company,” Starr said. She followed the link to Instagram and sent Brooks a private message. On June 23, Brooks called the Weekly office in Marathon.
“Yes, that’s me,” said the young woman with a delightful accent, who launched the message in a bottle 17 years ago in the Middle Keys while on holiday with her parents. “I don’t think we ever spoke or thought about the message until this day. You leave to go home and you forget about it really. It gives me chills.”
In the years that have elapsed, Brooks has grown up. She works at the headquarters of French Connection clothing store and has that side hustle, making balloon sculptures for special occasions. She said she and her parents have fond memories of the Keys, although they only returned one other time, years later, to visit Islamorada.
Daniel Lonergan, who found the message in a bottle, is amazed by the power of the internet.
“I haven’t had the chance to speak to Olivia yet, but I am going to send her that postcard she asked for all those years ago,” he said.
Lonergan, owner and operator of Caribbean Kayaking, was picking up “trash” on one of his tours when he found the bottle in September of 2020. It was floating near the junction of Whiskey Creek and Sisters Creek, not far from where Brooks, then 4 years old, launched it into the ocean in 2003. He reached out to the Keys Weekly Newspapers for a story to widen the net.
For her part, Starr said she’s thrilled with the sleuthing results.
“I love connecting people; that’s what it’s all about. Whether it’s matching people through their creative or business interests, I am always enthusiastic about it,” said Starr.
