Michigan girl's message in a bottle turns up 45 years later

May 29 (UPI) -- A woman who was 11 years old when she threw a message in a bottle from a Michigan lighthouse finally learned of her letter's fate 45 years later.

Tina Green, now Tina Green-Allera, slipped a note into an old vodka bottle and threw it into Lake Michigan from the lighthouse at Old Mission Peninsula while she was visiting her grandparents Aug. 29, 1974.

Green-Allera said she eventually forgot about the bottle, until recently she discovered a Facebook message she had received in 2015 from a man from Eric Amon.

Amon told Green-Allera he had found the bottle buried in the ground while working on a construction project a few miles away from the lighthouse.

"It's just such a treasure," Green-Allera told WJW Newsradio. "It's memories of my grandparents up there. And it's changed so much, that area is just so busy now. So it's just memories of when it was peaceful and quiet."

Green-Allera said Amon is mailing the message to her and the two are making plans to meet up in Traverse City and record a podcast about the bottle.

"We were both so excited," she told WJBK-TV. "It's like I knew him all along. Now we're buddies."