Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 27, 1995                   TAG: 9511290022
SECTION: NEWSFUN                    PAGE: NF-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SO?!!

Lodged on a stump in the woods near her Roanoke County home were two metallic Mylar balloons. Niederlehner assumed they were stray balloons from a neighbor's birthday celebration. "If it were up to me, I'd have dumped them," she said.

But Niederlehner's daughter, Kelly, a fifth-grader at Oak Grove Elementary School, rushed out of the house and collected the balloons. Kelly, who turns 11 next week, knew they had arrived too early for her birthday. She noticed there were not two balloons, but three.

The third balloon was not inflated, but attached to it was a business card. Included on the card was a name, address and note asking the balloons' finder to call the phone number on the card.

Kelly's dad faxed the balloons' sender, a man in Kansas City, Mo., telling him of his daughter's discovery. When the man returned Kelly's dad's call, the Niederlehners learned that he had released the balloons on the Friday morning before they were found early Saturday morning.

That means the trio of balloons traveled almost 1,000 miles in less than 24 hours!