On a cruise from Mexico to Hawaii, Los Angeles lawyer John Peckham and his wife, Dottie, put a note in a bottle and tossed it into the Pacific. Three years and nine thousand miles later, Vietnamese refugee Nguyen Van Hoa leaned down from a tiny, crowded boat and plucked the bottle from the South China Sea-amazed to find a name and address, a dollar for postage and the promise of a reward. "It gave me hope," said Hoa, who had escaped from a prison camp in Vietnam. Safe in a UN refugee camp in Thailand, Hoa wrote the surprised Peckhams. For two years they corresponded; Hoa married and had a son. Five years later, the Peckhams agreed to co-sponsor the emigration of Hoa, now thirty-one, and his family. They arrived for an emotional meeting with the Peckhams--and a new life from an old bottle.