Joyce Banken dug with a garden claw and five friends while hundreds of other hunters warmed themselves by a bonfire.
“We just thought we’d look while we were waiting for the (final) clue,” Banken said.
Her persistence turned up dirt, snow and a naked puck.
The medallion for the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt II was found Wednesday night in Roseville’s Central Park – but without the aid of the ninth and final clue.
The finders – five members of a recreational volleyball team and one of their sons – are Janel Donegan, of Hugo, and Joyce Banken, of White Bear Lake, who are 47-year-old fraternal twins; Mary Brown, 45, and her son Dan Brown, 16, of Mahtomedi; Amy Wilson, 45, of Mendota Heights; and Ginny Jarombek, 54, of Shoreview.
The crew turned up the medallion at 10:50 p.m. at the west end of Central Park at the base of a tree. The discovery came just minutes before the release of the last clue.
The group will receive the full $5,000 cash prize and $600 in gift certificates from Cub Foods.
The medallion in the first hunt this year was found Jan. 23 by Jake Ingebrigtson, 27, of St. Paul, after just three of 12 clues. The Pioneer Press opted to stage a second hunt, which it had done only once before in the hunt’s 56-year history.
That’s when Banken and her team started looking in Central Park.
They were prepared for a blitz Wednesday night – they’d been through the infamous “mosh pit” at Phalen Park in 2004, when the hunt went to the final clue – but weren’t really prepared to find the medallion.
Banken and Donegan were digging in a wooded area near Bennett Lake practically alone, they said, while most other hunters waited for phone calls with the freshly printed final clue. Most had family or friends waiting to buy a paper at the Pioneer Press building in downtown St. Paul, where the line stretched nearly a block.
Others were just going to follow the surge of hunters.
“All of a sudden this round thing was there,” Banken said. Without her glasses she couldn’t read the fine print on the plastic disc, which wasn’t concealed in any “disguise.”
She took it over to her sister to see if it was the medallion.
Earlier this week, hunters found phony medallions – hockey pucks that had been doctored to look like the real medallion. It’s still a mystery as to who planted them and why.
Donegan told her sister that she had the real thing.
The group decided it was time for a “potty break.” Banken quietly concealed the medallion, and the group walked briskly to their car in the Victoria Street parking lot.
“We screamed in the car,” Mary Brown said.
“You never really expect to find the puck,” Wilson admitted. “And then we did.”
The volleyball players, who had been hunting in Central Park in recent days, made their discovery after a game in their Maplewood recreational league.
The finders of the second medallion will receive $5,000, including $1,250 for returning the medallion to the Pioneer Press, $2,500 for having a registered 2007 Winter Carnival button and $1,250 for providing clippings of the published clues. They also will get to have lunch with Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray.
The find marks the second time the medallion was found in Roseville and just the ninth time it was discovered outside St. Paul. It was last hidden outside the city in 1988.
John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093 or at jbrewer@pioneerpress.com.
Copyright 2007 Pioneer Press.