The Mission: Send 1,000 Love Letters to Complete Strangers

Dec. 29, 2008— -- Who wouldn't want to get a love letter?

That's the idea behind a New York man's mission to send out 1,000 handwritten love notes to complete strangers.

What started out as a small pet project to make people smile has morphed into an international effort with requests coming from as far away as Russia and Australia.

Jake Bronstein is the man behind the pen. The 30-year-old marketing consultant told ABCNews.com that his love letter adventure started as one of the many ideas on his Web site designed to help people have fun, something he said adults don't make enough time for.

"He comes home with a lot of ideas," said Kristina Hoge, Bronstein's girlfriend. But neither expected the love letter project to become as big as it did, especially since posts on his blog usually generate only about 10 comments each.

"I think it was Thanksgiving, and he said, 'I think I'm going to need your help,'" Hoge, 26, said.

It's a far cry from the response Bronstein first got when, along with an intern from work, he stood in Manhattan's Union Square on a cold November day trying to hand out 30 copies of letters he'd written for no other reason then to brighten someone's day.

Bronstein, who lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, said he had read about a study that when someone does something nice for another person, endorphin levels for both people go up as well as for anyone else who witnesses the good deed.

So the guy who once hid $50 worth of pennies with good luck notes attached around town decided to write love letters.

After having his letters generally rejected in Union Square, Bronstein posted an offer on the Internet: If posters sent him their addresses, he would send them a handwritten love letter. He set his limit at 1,000 letters, a number he figured safely he would never have to fulfill.

Now, a little more than a month later, he's more than halfway to his goal.

Bronstein said he's hit his groove, but it is slow going.

"I can only do like five per hour," he said.