SAN DIEGO -- Though worlds apart, a health science class at La Costa Canyon High School and American soldiers serving in Mosul, Iraq, are connected in a very personal way.

Last December, students in Kristen Dennis' class wrote letters to soldiers.

Student Danielle Desmond said, "I just kinda wrote about what's happenening -- like the World Series and what's going on with high school and stuff."

Her letter and others like it ended up at the Army base in Mosul.

A soldier headed to lunch, was ordered first to take care of all the letters that had arrived. Because of those letters, he is still alive.

As a suicide bomber snuck into the mess hall tent, killing 22 and injuring at least 60 others, the soldier was sifting through letters.

A few months after the attack, the soldier who was ordered to attend to the letters in Mosul and thereby avoided the explosion, personally thanked Dennis' class.

"I was totally in shock. I didn't know what to do. I gave him a hug and said, 'Someone's looking out for you. I'm glad you're alive and still here,'" Dennis said.

Even more ironic is that the young soldier went to school at Carlsbad High School -- the strongest rival of La Costa Canyon High School.

Student Cody Fry said, "It was crazy. I had no idea that a letter I wrote to a guy thousands of miles away would save his life."

In the emotion of the moment, no one thought to get the soldier's full name.