NORTHUMBERLAND -- It started with a balloon and a bit of luck.

In 1980, Ann Rhinehart and her fourth-grade classmates in Sunbury launched balloons containing notes. They hoped to find pen pals.

And Rhinehart found one -- 250 miles away.

Chester Arthur, then 58, of West Haven, Conn., found her balloon when it washed ashore at a beach three days later and immediately replied to Rhinehart's note with a letter.

It turned out to be the first of many. Rhinehart, 37, of Northumberland, kept in touch with Arthur and Arthur's wife, Lois, until his death last year.

Now, 28 years after the balloon-launch, Rhinehart will meet Lois for the first time when she travels to her home in Florida on Saturday.

"I'm sure it's going to be a life-changing experience for me. I'm so excited to finally meet her," Rhinehart said.

As a 9-year-old at Rohrbach Elementary School, Rhinehart never expected anything to come of her balloon, and is still surprised when she thinks back to March 20, 1980, the day she let it soar into the sky.

"For our Weekly Reader Writing Pals program at school, we took a bunch of balloons to Front Street and just let them go," she explained. "Our names and addresses were inside along with a note that said Please respond if you find this.' "

In 1980, Chester, a self-proclaimed beachcomber, often took to the sand in search of coins and jewelry. But on March 23, he came home with something different.

"He got back and said, Guess what, I found a balloon and it has a note in it from a little girl in Pennsylvania. I'm going to write and tell her I found it,'"‰" said Lois, now 80.

Chester's first letter contained information about himself and his family, along with an invitation to write back and a "good luck" penny he found on the beach.

"Well Ann, your balloon sure traveled a long way -- all the way to West Haven, Connecticut," he wrote in the note.

Upon receiving his letter, Rhinehart couldn't believe her balloon had traveled so far, and that out of a class of 30 students, she was the one to receive a reply.

"I might have been the only one to get a pen pal, I can't remember. There might have been one other person who did," she said.