OUR NEIGHBORS: Treasure-seeker finds happiness, health in retirement hobby

For the Frontiersman

PALMER — At 82, Paul Kunkel says he is too old to go out hunting wild game.

“I can still hunt with this thing,” says the Palmer man, brandishing a metal detector. “I get a weird satisfaction finding something that is lost, because if I find it, it isn’t lost any more.”

Kunkel, who’s lived along Pope Road in Palmer since 1971, has seen a lot of changes to his neighborhood. There are a lot more people here now than when he and his wife moved here, or even when he retired from the Palmer Post Office in 1989.

But, change can provide opportunity — and change.

Kunkel was waving his $800 metal detector over the parking area outside the Alaska State Fair on Tuesday evening, a day after the fair wrapped up its annual 12-day run. For Kunkel, it’s a chance to look for dropped coins and even an occasional piece of jewelry.

He said he’s satisfied if he finds enough to pay for the batteries in his device; the exercise is the thing for Kunkel, who has a bad lung and two pig valves and a pacemaker in his heart.

“You’d be surprised at the coins you find,” Kunkel said, barely breaking stride. He’s working the field in a grid pattern, systematically looking and listening for his detector to ping a discovery. He’s been doing it so long, he often knows what the ping means without reading the indicator, which can tell him if it is a quarter, nickel or ring, and how far beneath the surface.

He finds valuable pieces occasionally — a ring or other jewelry. He does what he can to find the owner, even if sometimes the effort leaves him with a jaded view of human nature. He said he advertised finding a ring and in three days, seven women called to say it was theirs. He’s learned in the last 12 years to be more careful how he searches for the owner.

Once, he picked up a wallet belonging to a young woman, who reclaimed it without so much as a thank you.

Sometimes, he cannot can find the owner of rings he discovers. He keeps them on a string to show his friends who doubt his hobby.

“I paid for this machine in two years just picking up stuff around Palmer and Wasilla,” Kunkel said. “Anywhere people gather, you can find stuff.”

A friend asked him to help find his daughter’s diamond, lost in the parking lot of Palmer High in the snow a few years ago. He found it.

His biggest find may have been a $3,000 gold nugget found in an old mining area. But most of the time he’s stooping to pick up lost change.

But for a man who wants the exercise, that’s fine with him.

“To me it’s exercise and it’s hunting, and I enjoy it,” said the widower. “It’s one of the best hobbies a person can get into.”