Spaniard finds message-toting bottle released by Trinity Catholic School students

It was a long shot inspired by a book, a boy, his father, the Caribbean and a message in a bottle.

Carol Pannell giggled again and again at the memory of her fourth-graders at Trinity Catholic School in May 1998, all enthralled by "The Voyager's Stone" by Robert Kraske. It's a chronicle of a boy who wrote a message, stuffed it into a bottle and tossed it into the Caribbean Sea, and it crossed oceans before reaching Australia.

The bottle encounters hammerhead sharks, jelly fish and other sea creatures. Pannell was teaching about tides and cold currents at the time. Fascinated, her students decided to craft their own bottled messages.

Their letters were divvied up and dispatched in four Arizona Ice Tea glass bottles sealed with tape to Maine, Jacksonville, California and the Gulf of Mexico — places some of the students were planning to visit.

The unthinkable happened 17 years later.

Pannell learned a bottle was found in Tenerife, the largest island among the Canary Islands of Spain. Samuel Fernandez Dominguez sent a message to Trinity's Facebook page and said he'd spent the last few years attempting to make contact.

"I would like to contact them to inform them that after so many years, these letters arrived as well put in your posts," Dominguez wrote in the message. "Warm regards."

The Tallahassee Democrat received a message from Dominguez regarding the discovery. He's also a teacher and said finding the letters was a "big surprise."

"Now after knowing a little more about the teacher and the school context (it has me) excited," Dominguez said. "I am also a teacher, so I feel I identified with the feeling of the teacher after many years of dedication to these children."

Pannell taught at Trinity for 39 years before retiring two years ago. She was stunned to learn that a long-ago assignment has surfaced on the other side of the Atlantic.

"I'm just amazed this is what happened," she said, sitting outside the school's main office Thursday morning.

Pannell, 66, said some students declined to sign their names. Other students didn't mind, which is how the school verified the authenticity of letters scanned and sent by Dominguez.

"As we were doing it, it was like, 'Oh, it's just at fourth-grade project. I thought if it works, it works. If not, no problem," Pannell said. "But knowing now that it actually did work. Yeah, I think I would love to hear what the kids remember about doing it with me.

"It would be neat to hear what they have to say and what they remember."

Pannell is now in remission after a bout with ovarian cancer three years ago. Her retirement days are filled with reading, volunteering and traveling. Her career began as a student teacher in Sopchoppy, and she admits she wasn't sure she was cut out for it.

By the time she reached Trinity Catholic School, all the doubts were gone. Each day was different. Pannell went home energized.

Now she can add this recent discovery to her long list of reasons why she loved teaching.

School staff is now searching for Pannell's former fourth-graders to alert them about the discovery, said Trinity's Registrar Christy Stout.

"I thought it was really unreal. It's really amazing," Stout said of Dominguez's message. "Just having this come back has been great for her."

When Stout asked Pannell's good friend Angela Saxon, who teaches third-graders at Trinity, to call Pannell with news, she jumped at the chance.

"I was just so excited because Carol has always had the love of education in her heart," Saxon said. "She's done all of these wonderful things and I'm so glad time has told the story of her great ideas."