Would you like to be a Pepper, too?

To go along with Dr. Pepper's "23 flavors" campaign, the company started a campaign called "The Hunt for More", where they hid 23 gold coins in 23 different cities in North America. The coins were "valued" between $10,000 and $1 million, giving soft drinkers the opportunity to decode clues under bottle caps and drink labels online and find the coins. As coincidence would have it, the person who found the $1 million dollar coin just happened to be 23 years old. The really cool thing is, she's from the Houston area.

Laura Janisch of Channelview found the coin last week on President's Day in Sam Houston Park. After several clues were given, she knew that Sam Houston was a part of the puzzle; this first took her to the humungous statue in Huntsville. But when one of the clues said to "look inside one ten less than twice around" she figured out that it meant 360 degrees times two, which is 720; subtract 110 and you get 610, meaning the location was inside the 610 loop. We'll stick with the puzzles in Highlights magazines -- they're more on our level.

Dr. Pepper presented the million dollar prize to Janisch last Friday at a ceremony and filming at the park. Since the promotion was used to promote geography and history (along with a sweet, high-caffinated soft drink, of course), the members of the Heritage Society attended the ceremony to honor Laura and the event. Laura Janisch later said "I'm not really fond of history and geography." Oh well, so much for that.