Daily walk rewards father and son with treasures

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Every day, Keith Severin and his 8-year-old son, Adrien, go on a treasure hunt.

They take a walk somewhere in their Antelope, Calif., neighborhood, or wherever they happen to be that day, and keep their eyes open for treasures.

As a kid, almost everything is a treasure to Adrien. He never met a stick he didn't like.

"When we first started, he would pick up everything," Severin said.

They set out Jan. 1 with a plan to go out every day of 2008 for at least 15 minutes.

They stuck with it and over the course of the year have stumbled upon quite a bit of treasure.

On the refrigerator at home is a juice jug full of thousands of pennies they've found. There's also a big Bubba Gump beer glass full of other change, nickels to a Sacagawea dollar.

There's a small collection of older coins — including a penny from 1928 and some silver dimes — and a handful of foreign coins and Scandia tokens.

In a can, Keith Severin keeps a small collection of Ben Franklins — $100 bills that represent the proceeds from things found and sold.

That includes cans, bottles, a golf bag pull cart, a silver necklace and lots and lots of golf balls, collected at nearby Cherry Island Golf Course.

They passed the $1,000 mark early in December — all from walks as short as 15 minutes.

It hasn't always been fun. They head out in whatever weather presents itself. Good thing it's California.

They went out one recent December day when it was sprinkling a bit.

Adrien had been asking to go, but ended up not enjoying the soaking.

"I didn't know it was going to be that bad," he said.

They also didn't know it was going to be that good — in treasure hunting terms — when they started at the outset of 2008.

It began by chance.

"I came out of a store one day and a guy asked me for some change," Severin said. "I took about two steps and found a dime on the ground."

He combined that with a childhood memory of camping with his grandparents. They would send the kids out to see what they could find around the campsites.

Severin thought about how he'd worked so much during Adrien's first five years of life, that he didn't get to see him much.

Severin was a market meat cutter, but now works with his wife providing home day care.

"It's kind of nice to spend time with him and get to know him," he said.

They talk, not about the treasure, but about vacation, what's going on at home, school.

Adrien's math grades, not incidentally, have gone up since they started doing this. He keeps track of what they find and adds it up in his head.

At the neighborhood market recently, Adrien used his homemade poking-around stick — it has a paint brush on one end — to fish around under a vending machine while his dad mailed a package.

Adrien found some pennies and a nickel under a change-sorting machine. He found a dime and some more pennies in sidewalk cracks near the store.

He also found a faux-gem stud earring, while his dad found yet another in a series of souvenir pennies — the kind you pay 50 cents to smash at the amusement park. This one featured Mickey Mouse.

Adrien suggested selling it.

Father and son both talk of writing books based on their experiences.

These include Adrien poking at the minnows in creeks and his dad collecting scratches looking for golf balls in berry patches.

They once found a wallet and returned it. Adrien got $10.

They've been offered money by people who thought they were homeless because they dig in trash receptacles for recyclable cans and bottles.

Their adventure came to an end Dec. 31 with their 365th hunt.

A year is enough, said Severin.

What will happen to the money is uncertain.

"I'm going to spend it on a Ferrari," Adrien said, but later he amended that to a Corvette.

In the end, he said with all the gravity a freckled third-grader can muster, "only the future will tell."