Worcester teen's 60-year-old message in bottle presented by Coca-Cola

WORCESTER ― In April, a social media post caught the attention of the Telegram & Gazette.

Kate Rivers had found a Coca-Cola bottle with a message on it on a Cape Cod beach. The decomposing letter had a first name, age and address: Wendy, 14, Kinnicutt Road in Worcester.

Less than 24 hours later, Wendy’s identity had been discovered.

Aja Talarico saw the story and immediately thought, “Oh my God, that’s my mom!” The handwriting and address matched that of her late mother, Wendy Warner, who died in Grafton in 2021.

“When you lose someone, you know, you want to look for a sign,” she told T&G in a previous interview. “It’s like the 14-year-old version of my mother is reaching out to me.”

Coca-Cola is now telling the story of the meeting between two women through this message in a bottle, 60 years after it was written, in a two-minute video on its YouTube channel, which has nearly 4.5 million subscribers.

“Meeting Kate was surreal,” Talarico said after the Coca-Cola video was released. “I felt like we knew each other through this shared experience. My mom would have been thrilled if we met that way. I really appreciate Kate. She didn’t have to take this trip, but she chose to, and I think it’s really amazing and special.”

“I think we can all relate to this story of people coming together,” Rivers said. “Meeting Aja for the first time was a really heartwarming moment for me. I never imagined we would be sitting on the beach together sharing this wonderful moment, talking about her mother Wendy.”

“Aja was so kind and I felt like we could have sat and talked for hours,” Rivers added. “It was really nice to be able to share with Aja the loss of our mothers.”

Rivers lost his mother two years ago in September.