Students are back at Fairview High School in Boulder today, but police are looking for the geocaching couple who prompted its evacuation Monday.
A teacher from the school called police after seeing “a man and a woman burying some kind of box near the stone sign in front of the school,” a police news release said.
The man left an “orange tackle box wrapped in duct tape,” the release said. A teacher asked him, “Hi, how are you doing?” The man replied: “Good. It’s been a great day.”
The couple drove away in a cream-colored SUV with Nevada license plates.
Officers went to the school and decided to evacuate the building while they investigated the box, which turned out to be a geocache.
Geocachers use handheld GPS units to pinpoint hidden caches filled with trinkets.
The man was described as white, 45 to 50 years old, about 5-foot-10, with a stocky build. He had short, blond hair that was going gray. The man was wearing a red, shiny T-shirt with a Nike logo across the chest, blue jeans and white athletic shoes, the teacher told police.
The woman with him is described as white, in her mid-40s to early 50s, with short light-brown hair that was going gray. She was wearing a white blouse with a tweed sweater and sunglasses.
The Daily Camera reported that the geocache had been hidden by the school’s social studies teachers.
The cache, called “A Knight’s View,” has been hidden at Fairview High for just over two years by teacher Darrell Billington.
“My administration knew; I also got a district grant for it,” said Billington, who acknowledged that Monday, the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School, was an “unfortunate” day for someone seeking his cache to show up and dig around in front of the school.
The description of the cache, left by Billington on the Web, reads: “Here Ye All! Welcome to our Travel Bug Castle! Enjoy our pretty view! This is part of the geocaching Knights! It is our home. If you are one of us, then find the cache. If you are not, welcome honorable Knights! Please enjoy ‘The View.’ There are many, many muggles who would like to find the cache, be very careful!”
Fairview’s mascot is a knight. The term Muggles, coined in the Harry Potter books to describe non-magical people, is used by geocachers to describe people who aren’t a part of the activity’s community.
Over its two-year life, at least 120 people have found the cache, signing the log book and swapping trinkets left in the box: a key chain for a plastic Army man, a Sponge Bob figurine for a rubber ducky, a Scrabble tile for a King of Hearts.
Read more about geocaching at .
