ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. >> When a man was forced to throw away a liquid-filled snow globe before going through security at a Florida airport, he was heartbroken: It had been a gift from his mother to celebrate his and his wife’s adoption of a 5-year-old girl.

A couple who picked up on Michael Moore’s distress retrieved the sparkling, silver orb that played the song “Greensleeves” and yelled after him as he ran for his plane to Ohio that they would get it back to him somehow.

That was in February. On Wednesday, Ivelise Amarri Hernandez personally handed the keepsake over to Moore’s emotional mother, Linda Modry.

Modry, who lives in St. Petersburg, had bought the globe in January and engraved it with the message “We love you Katie. Nana and Papa.” She also decorated it with photos of the couple, their new daughter, and the couple’s dog, and gave it to Moore when he was visiting her.

But when her son tried to carry it with him onto the plane, security at the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport told him he would have to throw it out because it was filled with liquid.

Hernandez and her boyfriend retrieved the globe from the trash where a saddened Moore had tossed it. A few days later they posted a photo of the treasured gift on Facebook.

“We felt bad about the situation and want to find out who these people are so we can return their gift out of the kindness of our hearts,” Hernandez wrote in the post.

Shared 40,000 times, the message eventually caught the attention of executives at Things Remembered, the company that made the globe. Employees at the company’s Ohio headquarters and the St. Petersburg store were able to identify Modry as the buyer and connect her with Hernandez.

On Wednesday, Modry and Hernandez met in Tampa, and the snow globe was returned.

Said Modry, “It was raining when I picked it up. A good thing, because we were all crying.”