Katie Slocum pulled off her bookshelf a novel she had picked up at a little free library years before but had never opened.
Flipping through Ann Patchett’s “State of Wonder,” Slocum, 36, found a 23-year-old letter that would set her on an unexpected journey.
In a 132-word message dated Aug. 23, 2003, an unnamed grandmother remembered “My Dearest Jackie”: the girl who staged impromptu performances singing show tunes for her family and sparkled like “a rare vintage champagne” while giving so much of herself to her friends and family.
“Instantly, I knew it was something special,” Slocum said.
Slocum, who lives in D.C.’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood, vowed to reunite the keepsake with its owner, even though she didn’t have much to go on: No last name for Jackie, no name at all for her grandmother and no references to other people or places that would narrow her search.
But she thought about how she yearned for the closeness this girl Jackie had with her grandmother and, if she did, how much she would want someone to return a letter like this. In a nation’s capital rife with cynicism, sharp-elbowed politics, self interest and division, Slocum chose to help a stranger.
“I was like, ‘I have to do everything I can to make sure I can get this back to Jackie,’” she said.
Slocum, program manager at American University’s School of International Service and a server at Bar del Monte, a restaurant in her neighborhood, turned to the internet to help with what she admitted was a “Long shot.” On Feb. 26, she posted the details of her quest to three D.C.-focused social media forums. She also asked Dan Silverman, who runs the neighborhood blog PoPville under the nom de plume “Prince of Petworth,” to issue a callout for Jackie, a request Silverman promptly fulfilled.
Jacqueline Roche, 38, was scrolling through PoPville’s Instagram posts the next day when a headline about a lost letter caused her to pause. She glanced at the cursive in the photo of the letter, then saw to whom it was addressed.
“I knew right away that was my letter,” she said. “I was so shocked.”
Much of her surprise stemmed from never having realized until that very moment the letter that had brought her so much comfort over the years had disappeared.
Roche sent a message to PoPville’s Instagram account. She was the Jackie from the letter, which her paternal grandmother had given to her on her 16th birthday, Roche wrote. She had unknowingly given away the letter four years ago.
No one knows what happened to the letter between Roche donating it in 2022 and Slocum picking it up in 2024. Perhaps the novel sat untouched on the same shelf the whole time. Or, other readers stumbled upon Jackie’s letter and, sensing its importance, tucked the message in a literary bottle back inside and sent it along to other shores.
“I cannot believe this letter was found! The person is incredible for going to these lengths to return it to me,” she wrote in her message to PoPville.
A day later, Silverman replied, asking Roche to provide her email address, then connected her with Slocum. Roche sent a message to Slocum, thanking her and asking to meet so she could get the letter back.
As Roche approached Mount Pleasant’s town square the following weekend, the strangeness of the imminent encounter struck her. She had only texted with Slocum — how would she know what she looked like?
“You kind of start thinking, ‘Who could this person be?’” Roche said. “It’s almost like a blind date.”
As it would turn out, Slocum looked like the friend that, thanks to the letter, she would become.
Roche spotted her standing away from the bustle of the farmers market crowd holding the Ann Patchett book she had donated some four years ago. Roche introduced herself, then hugged Slocum, the first of at least three embraces she would initiate during that encounter.
They talked for about 20 minutes. Even though they had mainly discussed logistics before meeting and spent less than a half-hour face-to-face, Roche sensed a connection to Slocum forged in knowing the effort she put in to help her.
“I kind of felt like we were already friends,” Roche said.
Roche told Slocum the backstory of the letter that brought them together.
On Aug. 23, 2003, Roche’s parents did “a big thing” for her Sweet 16 birthday party. They rented a catering hall in Bergen County, New Jersey, where she grew up, and invited dozens of her friends and family members. Girls wore dresses; boys wore button-down shirts. Roche followed the tradition of naming 16 people in her life, giving a short speech about their importance to her and lighting her birthday candles one by one with each one in turn. Her grandma Irene Roche helped her light one of the last candles.
The two have always been close. Irene Roche, who just celebrated her 90th birthday, was the first person to take her granddaughter across the Hudson River into New York. In the mid-1990s, when Roche was in elementary school, her grandmother took her to her first Broadway show: “Beauty and the Beast.” Irene Roche, who grew up in the Bronx, raised two children and worked as a bookkeeper until retiring in her 70s, made sure to teach her teenage granddaughter New York City survival lessons that included how to hail a cab.
In an interview, Irene Roche recalled her advice back then: “The lesson is: You have to step out. You’ve got to put that arm out there,” she said. “You have to be strong.”
The two continue to talk every few weeks. Still, the letter has brought them even closer by sparking several trips down memory lane: The times Roche staged “Nutcracker” performances for her grandmother and other relatives, and the night on Roche’s 21st birthday when they went dancing in Atlantic City.
Irene Roche said her friends at her senior community have been tickled by the story of the resurfaced letter, because it’s the rare bit of news that’s not about a friend’s sickness or death. But it also caused pangs of sadness and regret for some who wished they had written similar letters to their granddaughters and had that kind of relationship with them, she said.
“They never thought of it, you know?” she said.
Irene Roche said she wrote the letter on a whim, wanting her granddaughter to know how proud she was of her — and why. As one of 27 grandchildren herself, she had never felt special growing up.
“I never knew how my grandmother felt about me,” she said.
Roche kept her grandma’s letter. A self-described “sentimental person,” Roche has held onto a lot of keepsakes over the years, which she stashes in two places: one of a growing number of clear, plastic tubs and, for those that are especially special, the bottom drawer of her nightstand.
Her grandmother’s letter has always fallen into the latter category. Since her 16th birthday, the letter has accompanied her to college in St. Augustine, Florida, to her first teaching job in New Orleans, then back to her childhood home in Bergen County, where she stored it for three years while she taught first grade in Brazil.
Roche retrieved the letter in 2016, and has since taken it with her to D.C., Michigan while pursuing a graduate degree in educational leadership and policy and back to D.C., where she settled in Mount Pleasant in 2019.
In the first years of adulthood, Roche said, she returned to the letter when she grew homesick or lonely, because it made her feel connected to her grandma and family. After moving to D.C. for the second time, making friends, finding a partner and otherwise putting down roots, she turned to it less.
So much less that she didn’t even realize it was missing. Roche is almost certain she lost the letter in 2022, when she accidentally included it in one of the many books she off-loaded while moving in with her boyfriend. If not for Slocum, Roche said, she suspects she might not have discovered it was gone until her grandma died, when she would have looked for it and, after a panicked search, find herself hit by a flood of emotions when she realized she had lost it.
“I’m sure it would have been, like, disappointment in myself to have lost such a treasure,” Roche said. “It would have been a little bit of everything: grief, sadness, disappointment, frustration.”
Because of Slocum, she only has to imagine.
What Roche lost turned out to bring back far more than the letter itself: a tighter connection to her adopted hometown, a deeper bond with her grandmother, a joyful moment Irene Roche could share with friends and a new friendship with a stranger whom Roche would probably never have met if not for something that feels like fate.
Roche has repeatedly shared updates with Slocum about the letter’s continuing story since they met: when she told her grandma, the response from Irene Roche’s friends and outside interest in their unlikely friendship.
“I feel like we’re probably always going to be connected somehow,” Roche said.
Irene Roche praised Slocum for sacrificing time and energy to help a stranger instead of throwing away the letter. “It truly is wonderful that somebody put themselves out to find out where you are and who you are,” she told her granddaughter. “In this day and age, that’s far and few between.”
Her comments resemble the words she wrote 23 years ago to a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood.
“You give of yourself + that’s a wonderful thing. It’s a rare gift,” she wrote. “I know whatever life gives you, you will take with both hands, + keep on dancing.”
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