Flashmob: Mingle, disperse and pick up trash

Steve Laevastu made his way with a steady stream of other people to the west side of the Space Needle one Saturday morning. The 9 a.m. deadline was approaching for a "flashmob" — a spontaneous event at which people come together at one moment, mingle and then just as quickly disperse.

More than 80 such events were happening simultaneously among geocachers all over the world. Locally, nearly 100 geocachers had logged into www.geocaching.com for the date, time and coordinates of the Space Needle for details of the 15-minute event, organized by Intolerable — the geocaching handle of Chris Bellevie of Redmond.

Suddenly, Bellevie set out a purple box. As people converged on him, he handed out "swag bags," each with a log sheet to be signed and turned back in, a raffle ticket, a pencil, pen, chocolate, a name tag and the event name: Worldwide Flashmob Under the Needle.

For 15 minutes, people mingled, traded trackable objects known as travel bugs and geocoins, took a group photo and logged in the event. At 9:15 sharp, they dispersed quickly, picking up trash along the way. CITO is a motto of geocachers and stands for "Cache in, trash out."

That's what Laevastu says makes geocaching addictive.

"It's just awesome," said Laevastu. "Three sure things in life: death, taxes and me and the family is going geocaching every single weekend. You're pirates, and you're looking for new treasure. It's incredible. Once you get that treasure, you feel on top of the world."

Petrina Vecchio, an ex-forest ranger who goes by the name Hoppingcrow, had used her Global Positioning System (GPS) in the backcountry for "many, many years. And then, it just sat on the shelf. As I got older, I wasn't going out into the backcountry quite as much, and I wondered, 'What am I going to do with this gadget?' "

She saw a newspaper article on geocaching.

"I'm clear out in the sticks — South Pierce County — and I looked on www.geocaching.com to see if there was a cache anywhere near me, not expecting that there would be," she said.

"There was one almost next door to me. So I just scampered over. I left my computer turned on, ran out — on foot — went over and found my first cache."

There are more than 215 countries involved with geocaching; it's spread to the Middle East, where there are caches in Saudi Arabia and dozens in Iraq.

Sean Fitzgerald, an attorney practicing in Bellevue, said when he and his wife, Sarah, moved here from Michigan, they didn't know Lynnwood, the community they moved to. Now they know five-fold more about their community than they did, Fitzgerald said.

"When we started into geocaching, we discovered all these local parks, all these fantastic views and sights that we'd never seen before," he said.

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com