Treasure Hunt

Pushing on the throttle, the pilot guides his single-engine plane toward the icefall, nose aimed straight for the mountain. For a moment, everything swirls in a sea of white--the clouds, the ice, the snow. He doesn't think about what happened 51 years ago. He doesn't think about his reason for being here. Flying in near-whiteout conditions, he thinks only about maneuvering his little red-and-white Super Cub safely out of the canyon.

If there were a contest for the store name of the year, Hello & Good Buys--which substitutes a dollar sign for the final letter--would win hands down. The newly opened Encino store stocks lots of tabletop deals, gift ware and tree ornaments at wholesale prices just in time for the holidays. Nancy and Howard Greenberg decided to open a retail operation after more than 25 years' experience in wholesale and retail, fairs and craft shows.

No one disputes that there's gold in the Pedro Bank--millions of dollars' worth, most likely. Billions, some say. It's been there for nearly three centuries, ever since Spanish galleons carrying the loot from the New World to Spain crashed into the shallow reefs and sank. Technology's shortcomings and Jamaica's commitment to archeological and environmental preservation have long rendered it off limits. But a high-tech, end-of-millennium gold rush is quietly sweeping the Caribbean.

If you think finding the best bargains at garage sales is as haphazard as the sales themselves, then you haven't spent time with Joe Hodulik. Hodulik has been getting up early almost every Saturday and Sunday for years to search for what he describes as "treasures." And while most people see this as merely a stroll through a series of huge junk bins, Hodulik considers the process more of a challenge requiring real strategy. You have to be prepared. Knowing all the little secrets helps, too.

Richard Steinmetz knew exactly what the federal marshals wanted when they pounded on his door: his nicotine-stained shipwreck treasure, the Alabama bell. For years the bell, a relic of the Confederate raider the CSS Alabama, sat in his antiques store in New York. In 1990, strapped for cash and facing heart surgery, Steinmetz put it up for auction. Then the feds came calling. "They accused me of stealing government property," Steinmetz says, wheezing in indignation when he recalls the scene.

For Karl S. Ryll, who grew up dreaming of lost treasures in faraway lands, the lure of a sunken World War II ship in the Philippines was too strong to resist. So Ryll pinned his fantasy on a treasure hunter from Los Angeles named Dennis Standefer. The way Ryll tells it, Standefer boasted to investors that he had found a valuable shipwreck off a remote island in the Philippines and needed to raise funds to salvage its valuable mother lode.

The word "treasure" fires the imagination with thoughts of sunken galleons full of gold and precious jewels waiting to be found. Since most people just dream about finding riches, you vow to be a doer. But being too claustrophobic to dive beneath the waves, you decide to take metal detector in hand and go searching with a real expert, Ventura resident Ed Milota. His treasure quests have taken him from the beaches of Ventura County and Malibu to Greek and Roman caves.