A memorial bench swept off the Dunedin Causeway during Hurricane Helene in 2024 has turned up more than 1,000 miles away, washed ashore on a beach in Bermuda. The bench honored Medhat “Mike” Sadiku, who died in 2012, and had sat along the Florida causeway since 2018, placed there by his niece Amanda Sadiku's aunt, who lives in Clearwater.
The discovery came as a shock to the Sadiku family, who had long given up hope of finding the bench after it disappeared. According to Bay News 9, Hurricane Helene tore the bench from its concrete slab in 2024, and while other benches lost in the storm were eventually recovered, Mike Sadiku's bench was marked missing.
The mystery stayed unsolved for roughly two years, until a woman in Bermuda reached out. The bench stayed missing until September 18, when a woman there contacted the family to say she had found it along the coast, according to Hawaii News Now, which credited the original report to Bay News 9 via CNN Newsource. The woman, identified by the Royal Gazette as Angela Dill, said she had spotted the bench at Southlands Park Beach in Warwick, Bermuda.
An Inscription That Took On New Meaning
What made the discovery resonate even more with the Sadiku family was the message engraved on the bench itself. The Royal Gazette reported that an inscription on the bench read, “It'll be alright.” Amanda Sadiku said those words carried special meaning, recalling, “My dad always said, ‘It'll be alright.’”
She also pointed to a strange bit of symmetry in where the bench ended up. “So our dad just wanted to go to Bermuda,” Amanda Sadiku said, according to Bay News 9. The Royal Gazette quoted her saying, “Maybe that’s where dad wanted to be.” Her father's first grandson, Serene, still enjoys visiting the spot where the bench used to sit along the causeway, even though the bench itself is gone.
A Meteorologist Weighs the Odds
How exactly the bench made its way from a Gulf Coast causeway to a beach in the middle of the Atlantic remains largely a matter of educated guesswork. Spectrum Bay News 9 meteorologist Kyle Hanson said Hurricane Milton may have come soon enough after Helene to push the bench into the Gulf, where the Loop Current may have then carried it along the Gulf Stream before it washed ashore in Bermuda roughly two years after Helene struck.
Hanson was careful to frame the scenario as a possibility rather than a confirmed path, and he put long odds on the whole journey. “The chance of this happening is lower than 1 in 100,” Hanson said, calling the bench's survival and resurfacing “very lucky, very miraculous.”
Scientists who study ocean debris note that tracing any single item's route across open water is notoriously difficult. Per NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, debris can be carried far from its origin, and currents and winds can scatter items over hundreds of miles, making it difficult to pin down exactly where something entered the water.
What Happens to the Bench Now
The bench was not the only one lost during Helene. According to Fox Weather, several other benches were swept away in the same storm, prompting the city of Dunedin to pause its memorial bench program in October 2024. Even if Mike Sadiku's bench makes it home, the city has said it would not be able to put it back on the causeway because of its current condition, per Bay News 9's reporting.
For now, the bench remains in Bermuda. The Royal Gazette reported that an American business has offered to help transport it back to the United States on a freight ship, while Amanda Sadiku — the oldest of three daughters — is still deciding whether she will travel to see the bench in person or have it shipped back instead.
