NORTH BEND — Nearly everyone has heard stories of people who have sent or discovered a mysterious message in a bottle.

And that’s exactly what drove Hillcrest Elementary students and their reading teacher to drop two bottles in the Pacific Ocean on May 17.

After reading such a story in Jane Emmett’s reading class, the nearly 40 second-graders filled the pink and green sports bottles with jokes, drawings and descriptions of themselves in hope of capturing the adventure of the children in Ann Cameron’s “A Curve in the River.”

Except they never believed the bottles would be found. But on the last day of school, they got a surprise.

“I thought it would just get lost and never work, but it did,” said 9-year-old Alexis Dean.

On Wednesday, Sarah Wotherspoon and her daughter, Isabella, of Fortuna, Calif., found one of the bottles on Centerville Beach in Humboldt County.

Wotherspoon, 44, who lives about 20 minutes from the beach, had gone out to the shoreline on an unusually sunny day with her 16-year-old daughter.

Both fans of the television show “Lost,” the two discussed what they would do if they suddenly found a body in the water.

“I said, ‘Let’s bring it back to a pleasant thought. I’ve always wished for a treasure to wash on shore,” Wotherspoon recalled.

As soon as she said that, mother and daughter started walking again. That’s when Wotherspoon spotted it — a green container on the shoreline.

“I thought it was maybe trash, an old coffee cup or something,” Wotherspoon said.

As she got closer, she realized she’d found a bottle packed with paper. It looked like it had just washed up from the waves.

 “I knew then, it was a message in a bottle. We started jumping up and down, and I started shouting ‘Our treasure! Our treasure!’” Wotherspoon said.

Inside the barnacle-covered bottle, the two Wotherspoons found the 14 little notes written by the children, a main letter describing the project, and a bolt screw to weigh down the container. Wotherspoon said she and Isabella read the notes at the beach and on the way home.

One of the notes, from Alexis, described the girl’s favorite activities and this knock-knock joke:

“Knock, knock. Who’s there? Snake. Snake who? Snake you.”

“We’ve been trying to decipher a few of these for a few days,” Wotherspoon said. “We just laughed. They are so cute.”

Although Emmett’s letter asked the finder to write a response on an enclosed, self-addressed postcard, there was none to be found. That just added to the adventure for Wotherspoon and her three children, she said.

They looked up Hillcrest Elementary online and then sent an e-mail on Thursday to a second-grade instructor. Wrong teacher.

No teachers were identified in the bottle’s contents. In the Wotherspoons’ letter, they introduced their family. It included photos of their town and told the story of how they located the bottle. It also asked the students to decide whether the family should send the bottle back to sea, return it or keep it.

“It’s like a little ambassador traveling the seas,” Wotherspoon said. “I just think it’s such a great story. Just the thought of these innocent, optimistic second-graders going to all this trouble and having all this hope and enthusiasm. That just warms my heart, it really does.”

A 20-year veteran of the North Bend School District, Emmett, 58, who sat with several of the students in a classroom on her last day of work prior to retirement, said she’d done similar projects in the past, but “A Curve in the River,” inspired her to take it up one last time.

“I wanted them to write, for one thing. I wanted them to tell about themselves. I wanted them to remember the story and to be excited about what could happen,” Emmett said. “It was a great ending to find out it actually got somewhere. Now we can anticipate where the other one will end up.”

Her husband, Drew, who works for the Coos Bay Towboat Co., had the crew of the tugboat “North Bend” take the bottles to sea. From there, the bottles rode on the wood chip freighter “Stellar Breeze,” before being dropped into the ocean about 15 miles off the coast. Emmett said the 40 students who participated came from Heather Lindsay and Merry Lojkovic’s second-grade classes.

After Emmett learned the bottle had been located in Humboldt County, she showed the students a map of the United States to show them where the bottle had gone.

“Whoa, that’s a long ways,” said Ginny Gonzales, 8.

Several of the children said they hoped the second bottle would travel to Hawaii, Mexico or Europe.

“I was hoping it was going to Germany because I have ancestors that live there. A lot of them,” said Amie Brecheisen, 8.

As excited as the boys and girls were about the discovery of one of the bottles, they admitted that they had slipped their minds until now.

“I’m actually really glad that it at least got somewhere,” Ginny said. “I think it’s better than doing it in the Post Office because you know where it’s going. When you send it in the ocean, it’s actually surprising.”