For a lot of folks, hunting for the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt medallion is about the potential prize money of $10,000.

For others, it’s about getting outside to enjoy wintry weather.

For a few, though, the hunt might just be in their blood.

“I went out with my dad. It was my mom’s way of getting him out of the house,” said Joe Horwath, who found the 2009 medallion in Swede Hollow with his daughter, Jessica Horwath. “Last year was probably the start of a really big tradition for Jessica and I.”

When the first clue of the 2010 hunt is released next Sunday, the Horwaths won’t be the only “legacy” hunters churning up icy chunks of snow in Ramsey County parks.

Here are a few stories to get hunters fired up for the latest hunt and, maybe, in the mood to start a tradition of their own.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Rob Brass calls himself a third-generation hunter — with a fourth generation due just after this year’s hunt.

“My mom had me out when I was 5,” he said. “At 10 or 11, I started wanting to hunt, looking for the medallion, solving clues. By the time I was in high school, my mother said I was better than her at solving clues.”

Now 31, Brass will hit the parks again with his mother, Marcia Brass, on Day 1 of the hunt. The duo has already picked out some potential hiding spots but wouldn’t divulge the whereabouts.

“It’s addicting. It’s fun. You get to get out there in the middle of winter and enjoy the day,” he said. “It’s the camaraderie with family and friends that is the most attractive.”

Brass had his closest call with the medallion in 2007, when he offered advice to a fellow hunter on where the puck might be tucked. That fellow hunter — Jake Ingebrigtson — found the medallion a few minutes later.

“I was on the phone with him and told him not to tell anyone anything,” Marcia Brass said of the 2007 hunt. “He doesn’t like it when I remind him of that.”

Marcia Brass picked up the treasure-hunting bug from her mother, who loved to clip clues and noodle through their rhymes.

When her parents retired to Florida, her mother would wait up at night for a phone call from the Brasses in Minnesota — they’d ring her from a downtown St. Paul phone booth after picking up the latest clue at the Pioneer Press building.

“Yeah, I infected my kids with treasure hunting,” Marcia Brass said. “I think that there’s a special bonding that has happened.”

DEEP IN THE HEART OF A TEXAN

Julie Wicks wasn’t born in Minnesota, but she’s trying to get here as soon as she can.

“When people ask me where I’m from, I sometimes tell them Minnesota,” the Iowa native and Dallas-area resident said. “Someday, I’ll be able to say I’m from Minnesota.”

Every January since 2004, Wicks has flown to the North Star State for one- to two-week stints to don a snowsuit and tromp through snow-covered parks in search of the Treasure Hunt medallion.

She caught the puck fever from her sister, Becki Pope, a St. Paul resident for the past 20 years who “is an avid Winter Carnival participant and treasure hunter.”

The women’s 78-year-old father, now retired to Arkansas, gets in on the hunt via the Internet.

“If he were up (in Minnesota), he would come out with us,” Wicks said. “I definitely know where Becki and I get the sense of adventure — it’s from dad.”

This year, Wicks flies in Jan. 20 — three days into the hunt — and will use a traditional hoe to scrape at the crusty snow/ice alongside her sister. They’ll be joined by a 27-year-old niece most nights and two great-nieces — ages 5 and 7 — on some afternoons.

“Even though their own parents are not into it, they just think it’s a riot,” she said of the young girls.

The thrill for the family isn’t finding the medallion — it’s the hunting.

“It’s a really great bond for my sister and I,” Wicks said. “And all the friends I’ve made … when I’m there, I don’t feel like an out-of-towner. I feel like I’m a part of what’s going on. I really love that.”

A CALIFORNIAN DREAMING

Growing up, Samantha Vance’s family summered in a Little Canada home and spent the rest of the year growing grapes in California’s Napa Valley.

One winter, during a visit north to tend to a sick grandmother, Vance’s uncle took her out to kick snow around Lake Phalen — they were looking for the Treasure Hunt medallion.

“I was just hooked,” said Vance, now a full-time Californian. “I loved the lore of it, that you had to think and figure things out.”

She didn’t make it back for any more hunts, but her grandmother would send her clues in the mail.

Now, 25 years after her initial hunt, Vance’s hunt fervor still escalates each winter.

“For a Californian, I’m a little obsessed,” she said.

Each year, she turns a spare bedroom into a search headquarters, replacing pictures on the walls with maps of Ramsey County parks.

“I wait online every night to get the clue. It pretty much consumes my thought process,” she said.

Vance flew back for a hunt in 2007 and planned to come back every other year to hunt. She keeps winter clothes, a rake and a shovel at a friend’s house in the Twin Cities.

But a family emergency kept her away one year, and though she planned on coming back this year, work in California is keeping her home.

“It just kills me when I have a hunch and I can’t get out there,” she said. “If life changes in the next two weeks, I may show up near the end of the hunt.”

John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093.

Copyright 2010 Pioneer Press.