Photo: Courtesy Diane Turton, Realtors
A New Jersey realty sign lost during Hurricane Sandy was found last month on a French beach, five-and-a-half years after it was ripped from a Brielle borough home in October 2012.
Officials with Diane Turton Realtors, based in Point Pleasant Beach, shared photos of the damaged sign washed up near Bordeaux, France,in a Facebook poston Wednesday. The sign traveled nearly 4,000 miles.
“The sign had to be pretty sturdy to withstand all that wind and rain,” founder Diane Turton tells PEOPLE. “In my 53 years in the business I’ve never had anything like that happen. It’s like a message in a bottle. It’s crazy.”
Company manager Perry Beneduce says he received an email at 3:30 a.m. local time on May 18 from 64-year-old Hannes Frank, of Brussels. Frank wrote that he had been walking along the beach and came across the blue, green and white sign. Intrigued, he decided to track down its owners.
Courtesy Diane Turton, Realtors
“It was curious,” Frank told theNew York Times. “I looked at it and found it quaint.”
Beneduce says he and Turton were in disbelief when he got the message, and that he was shocked when he saw photos of the weathered sign.
“We thought somebody was pulling our leg, to be honest,” Beneduce tells PEOPLE. “The fact that he took the initiative to send us something, we felt we had to give him the respect of responding back.”
So, they did. Working with Frank, Turton and Beneduce determined the photo’s exact location using the longitude and latitude from the images and even enlisted the help of an oceanographer to determine just how the sign traveled so far.
“Sandy was devastating and we were right in the brunt of it,” Turton says, noting that most of the company’s offices are along the water.
Now, Turton is planning to travel to France to meet with Frank and take the sign back to New Jersey.
“It’s so rare that [Frank] would be kind enough to take the time to write the name down then go back on the Internet and find me,” Turton says. “I want to bring the sign back so we can frame it.”
She adds: “This shows that people still care. We were overjoyed. I couldn’t believe it.”
According to the National Weather Service, Hurricane Sandyresulted in at least 147 deathsin the Northeast United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Twelve people died in New Jersey,CNNreports. Turton says three of their offices were destroyed in the storm.
source: people.com
