Two of three buried treasures, worth $100,000 each, have been found.
“It still doesn’t feel real,” said Jeff Lerue, who found the hidden treasure in Calgary.
Participants in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver were able to purchase maps that contained clues that would lead them to the buried treasure.
Edmonton’s treasure was found just 20 hours after the hunt began on Saturday, June 1.
That’s when Lerue, who is from Edmonton, decided to try his luck with Calgary’s hunt.
“I’m half decent at riddles and what not so I convinced the girlfriend on Monday, ‘Let’s just do it and buy one and see what we can do,’”
Lerue spent several hours researching the clues.
“Some of the riddles, once I figured the answer out, it kind of really drew us right to that certain area.”
By Tuesday, Lerue convinced his girlfriend to make the trip to Calgary to actually search a few areas. He said there were several gold hunters searching the same area, so he decided to try a different spot.
That’s when Lerue found it.
“I screamed my girlfriend’s name, I’m like ‘Kristen, Kristen,’ and she was like ‘What?’ and I was like ‘I found it,’ and I freaked out. I’m trying to open it and there was line tied around it. I dropped the box and was like, ‘Oh my god,’ and I just grabbed it and was looking at it,” he said.
He rushed back to their truck to follow the instructions left on a card inside the box which led him to the actual treasure.
“Things have been really rough for my girlfriend and my family and I and this couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Lerue has been off work for two years because of a disability and walks with a cane and said he was recently denied AISH.
He plans to pay some bills and take a vacation with his girlfriend.
As for being an Edmontonian to find Calgary’s treasure: “I hate to say it but it kind of feels nice,” Lerue laughed.
“It’s not a poke at Calgary or anything but I mean, two for two now.”
Goldhunt, the group that is running the modern-day treasure hunts, won’t say where the treasure was found in Edmonton or Calgary until Vancouver’s is found.
