When the unshaven man in a snowmobiling suit arrived at the park with a hoe in hand, it was always a good sign.
Luck was around the corner.
Kirk R. Condie, who achieved the implausible feat of finding the St. Paul Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt medallion — twice — died last week of a heart attack. He was 57.
The Minneapolis construction worker often puzzled over his iconic status in the fanatic circles of medallion hunters, his friends say. People who recognized him during the annual hunt would ask whether they could touch him, as if some of his good fortune might rub off.
"The name Kirk Condie is synonymous with the hunt," said Jake Ingebrigtson, an extreme medallion seeker from Shoreview who befriended Condie. "He's probably the most famous hunter of all time. Kirk never understood it."
In fact, the first time they met, Condie offered to donate Ingebrigtson a memento from his 1984 search. And it wasn't just any trinket. It was a fragment of a broken Sly & The Family Stone record that had been taped to the medallion. Condie found it in Newell Park with the help of a metal detector after the last of 12 clues.
Ingebrigtson, shocked that the legend would so easily give up his historic souvenir, put $50 on the counter and called it a deal.
As for the fame, "Kirk never wanted it," Ingebrigtson said. "He enjoyed going out for the treasure."
Condie next found the puck in Cherokee Park in 1992 and attributed it to dumb luck. As the story goes, he looked up and watched an eagle soar through the sky. With the next scrape of the hoe, he found a mitten on the ground bearing the medallion.
But his modesty belied a competitive edge, said Trent Tooley, a New York-based filmmaker who featured Condie in a documentary about the hunt, "No Time for Cold Feet."
The veteran hunter changed his snow-moving strategies, starting with a shovel and then moving to a hoe because it involved less muscle exertion. The hoe gave Condie such good results that it's now the tool of choice for the medallion-seeking Camo Crew, said "Camo" Dan Fleming of New Brighton.
Finally, Condie settled with a pitchfork, Tooley said, likening the strategy to a catfish using his whiskers to search for his next meal.
Condie came off a bit rough around the edges, Tooley said. "He had bad teeth, he had a beard. … He had this intensity, this expression." But as soon as he opened his mouth, "he sounded like a college professor," displaying a learnedness about all sorts of subjects such as film history and photography.
Only two other parties have found the treasure twice. Two St. Paul grandmothers, Iola Mossbrugger and Peggy Fritzke, claimed the puck in 1966 and 1972. The family of truck driver Eugene Longtin seized the medallion in 1959 and 1961.
Condie, the second of six children, lived with his parents for most of his life. Growing up in St. Paul, he was an acclaimed wrestler at the former Murray High School, said his father, Richard Condie, a retired immunologist and college professor. Kirk Condie later graduated from Middleton High School in Wisconsin.
During the Vietnam War, Condie served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Panama. He later gravitated toward construction work and built computers on the side.
On Feb. 20, he apparently had a fatal heart attack while on the way to a store from his family's Lake of the Isles home in Minneapolis, Richard Condie said. The Toyota Camry he was driving went off the road about 200 feet and struck a tree. Condie only suffered a cut on his forehead, his father said.
A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Lakewood Cemetery Chapel at 3600 Hennepin Ave. in Minneapolis. Visitation will begin at 1:30 p.m.
Laura Yuen can be reached at lyuen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5498.
Copyright 2006 Pioneer Press.
