February 2007
	People

Patience, Grasshopper

Pennsylvania music teacher-turned-treasure hunter helps locate a $50,000 antique jewel in a nationwide search.

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It was a fairy tale ending for Fred Pacolitch, courtesy of a best-selling fairy tale book. The music teacher from Hanover Middle School in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, found one of 12 jewels hidden around the country as part of a nationwide treasure hunt associated with the popular children’s book, A Treasure’s Trove. The book, written by former banking software entrepreneur Michael Stadther, tells the story of a forest whose creatures are crystallized each night by a mysterious cloud of dust.

Clues to the jewels’ locations are woven into the pages, meaning that kids aren’t the only ones studying the whimsical illustrations and text closely. Adult devotees like Pacolitch account for many of the 400,000 copies sold and its former spot on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Pacolitch’s search took him from the William Penn statue in Philadelphia to New York City, hoping to find the tokens for the jewels Stadther hid in a cross-country trip in 2004. 

Last summer, the teacher and a New Jersey couple he’d traded clues with in an online forum about the book found the $50,000 grasshopper jewel’s token nestled in the notch of a dogwood tree in Poughkeepsie, New York. Stadther later presented them with the actual jewel—a 19th-century piece set with 85 green demantoid garnets and 25 diamonds. Once the contest officially concludes, they can sell it and split the proceeds.

For more on the treasure hunt, including a free, downloadable teachers guide with classroom activities, head to www.atreasurestrove.com for English, social studies, math, science, art and music classes