St. Paul Park resident Cookie Howard has been looking for the Treasure Hunt Medallion for more than 30 years. Tonight, she and her pals, Rachel Olson of White Bear Lake and Kay Anderson of Roseville, will be huddled over maps and dictionaries and dialing up the Internet to try to get inside the heads of the clue writers.
"The first couple of clues never tell you much of anything," says Howard. "You can usually narrow it down a little bit, but that's about it. We read them over and over and over. We analyze them in so many directions, and that's part of the fun of it."
In addition to being a team of medallion hunters, Howard, Olson and Anderson play bridge together. Their medallion diligence finally paid off in 1995, when Olson found the coin in a knit bag in Battle Creek Park.
"We were on our lunch hour," says Howard. "Rachel picked it up and threw it back down on the ground right away. She said, 'I knew it was in there, but it scared me.' And I understand that, because it was weird. You spend all this time looking for it, you don't eat or sleep, but you don't think you're ever really going to find it."
Over the years, the three have forged new friendships and discovered new restaurants and bars during their searches. Exactly how much time will Anderson devote to what she calls "The Hunt" over the next 10 days?
"Every waking moment," she says. "If you could talk to my husband, he'd tell you to get rid of that medallion hunt. He's a fisherman and a hunter, but this is my week."
Copyright 1998 Pioneer Press.
