'Really addicted' Oakdale woman will share with friend.
A lifelong obsession with the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt paid off Monday for an Oakdale woman who scooped the medallion from a snowy spot at St. Paul's Como Park, claiming the $10,000 prize for herself and her treasure-hunting friend. The discovery came about 9:30 a.m. as Cathi Hogan retraced an area near the picnic pavilion close to Horton Avenue and Midway Parkway where she had spent hours digging on Sunday, her birthday.
When she found the prize folded inside an Iron Man sports sock and tucked into a Dove soapbox, the part-time preschool teacher, exhausted from countless hours of searching, began shedding tears of joy at her success in the newspaper's 50th annual Treasure Hunt.
It wasn't the money, a seat aboard a float at Saturday's St. Paul Winter Carnival Torchlight Parade or a pair of round-trip airline tickets that had her giddy. It was the fulfillment of a lifetime quest for the medallion, to see it, to hold it, to be first.
"Yesterday was my 44th birthday, and I've spent as many birthdays as I can remember looking for the treasure," Hogan said. "I am really addicted to the Treasure Hunt. People really give me a hard time because I sort of drop everything, but I've always wanted to find it."
Betty Gjengdahl of North St. Paul, Hogan's hunting partner for the past three years, agreed.
"It's just fun," said Gjengdahl, 48, whose 17-year-old daughter, Karin, joined in the hunt. "If you find it, that's real fun. The money is not the issue."
Hogan traces her passion for the search to her childhood. Every year, she and her mother, who gave birth to her a day after attending the Winter Carnival's Grande Day Parade, looked for the prize. "I really do like the whole Winter Carnival, the parades, the ice sculptures. Saturday, my husband and I came to the parade. I'm not just a fair-weather hunter."
While some acquaintances dismissed Hogan's enthusiasm for the hunt, the notion intrigued Gjengdahl, whose children go to school with Hogan's. While Hogan's spirit buoys the enterprise, Gjengdahl researches points of geography and history. In the field, Hogan digs randomly, hoping to come across the prize, while Gjengdahl works more methodically, digging all the way through snow until shovel meets grass.
Hogan's daughter, 19-year-old Heather, shared her mother's odyssey until she went to college in Missouri. She now takes part by phone. Hogan and her husband, Kevin, who works for the St. Paul public schools, have three other children who have not inherited as strong an interest in the Treasure Hunt.
In years past, Hogan said, she let her thoughts drift as she searched, imagining what she would do with the money or how she might react if she found the medallion. This year, she kept her focus on the hunt itself, which she thought helped improve her chances.
She also tried to manufacture some of her own good luck. After a clue mentioned a "peaceful bird," she bought a bar of Dove soap on Friday and gave her dog, Angel, a sniff. Hogan buried it in the snow in her front yard and unleashed the Labrador retriever mix, which promptly dug up the box and devoured it.
The last few nights, she and Gjengdahl stopped at the Pioneer Press building downtown to pick up new clues in early editions of the paper. They hunted until 2 a.m. or later each morning, took a rest break, then hit the trail again shortly after daylight for several hours each day.
Zeroing in on Como Park after Sunday's "cocoa" and "mocha" combination clue, Hogan and Karin Gjengdahl shoveled in vain from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. But they thought some invaluable good luck rubbed off, when they bumped into the winners of the 1969, 1988 and 1998 Treasure Hunts.
Hogan returned alone Monday morning at 8, packing a tuna sandwich for lunch and an orange for Betty Gjengdahl, who was stuck at a meeting. For good luck, Hogan was wearing boots, snow pants and other winter gear borrowed from each of her kids. Going with her gut, she went back to the spot where she spent Sunday digging, eventually working to an undisturbed patch of snow in a circle of trees near the picnic pavilion.
After about 90 minutes, she found the Dove box and fell to her knees. She felt the medallion through the sock, clutched it to her chest and tucked it securely in a pocket. She let the tears drop, glee and disbelief overwhelming her.
"I said, 'Oh, my God. Oh, my God,' " Hogan said. "This nice woman walked by and asked if I was OK. I said, 'I think I just found the medallion.' I think she thought I was nuts."
After a week of all-consuming treasure hunting, she said she was looking forward to getting some sleep and spending time with her family.
"Is it worth it?" she exclaimed, hugging her husband as he greeted her in the newspaper's lobby. "Now you could hire a maid for the week of the Winter Carnival!"
Copyright 2001 Pioneer Press.