Note floats in bottle all the way to friendship

It's the stuff of movies -- putting a message in a bottle, dropping it in the ocean. It's frequently been portrayed as a last, desperate attempt to get rescued off a desert island.

But now, reports CBS News contributor Priya David Clemens, it's a tale of a newly-forged friendship.

It began when eleven year old Thomas Craig was on an annual fishing vacation with his family, off the coast of central Oregon.

He found an oddly-shaped bottle, and was inspired to scribble a note, slip it inside, and toss it into the sea.

Remarkably, the bottle began a 2,000 mile journey, riding the ocean currents from Winchester Bay to the shores of Hawaii's Big Island.

That's where nine-year-old Trinity Ballesteros found it, floating in a tide pool.

Her father helped her open it and together they read: "My name is Thomas and I live in Oregon. I'm ten years old this week. I'm salmon fishing deep in the ocean. I would like to hear from you. Please write back."

Trinity responded by e-mail.

Thomas told CBS News he literally whipped his head around in shock when he saw the e-mail.

"Somebody found it? No way!" he remembers thinking. He says he was "in disbelief, kind of - even though it's happening to me."

An electronic current carried Thomas's e-mail reply back to Trinity.

And in an instant, a friendship began to blossom.

Now, Thomas and Trinity e-mail each other once or twice a day, he told "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Jeff Glor.

Thomas and Trinity saw each other for the first time via satellite on the show - Thomas in Portland, Oregon and Trinity in Honolulu.

Thomas told Glor he never thought the bottle would last even a few minutes, let alone make its way to Hawaii, because it hit the top of his grandfather's boat.

"We thought it was going to shatter .. and go everywhere," he said, "but when it landed in the water, we were just getting ready for it to sink, and it ... ended up just fine."

Thomas' mother, Amy Bishop, told Glor, "This is all really surprising. We really had no idea that anybody would find that bottle. We thought this was just one of Thomas' fun ideas that he had."

And Trinity says she thought at first that the message was "from someone on a different island who needed help."