She didn't realize it was worth $1,000 when she picked it up, but it didn't take long for Kathryn Corbett to realize she was this year's winner of The Citizen Medallion Treasure Hunt game when she spotted the medallion last Friday.

Corbett, 25, said she found the medallion in Emerson Park while out on a walk with her boyfriend, Brian, 25.

"I didn't know what it was," she said, adding that she just recently moved to Auburn from Syracuse. But he knew exactly what it was.

Brian said they had been following the clues in the paper and had been invited to a party at the park. They decided to take a walk and look for it during the party.

"When she found it, I thought that it might not be the right one for this year and that maybe it was from another year," he said. "But we took it home and it matched all the clues."

The find has dual importance for Brian. His grandmother was a subscriber of The Citizen for almost 50 years and he said that, through the years, they would collect the clues and search for the medallion together.

"It was a family thing," he said. "One year she sent me to the park next to the police station to look for it, and I went; but then it started raining so I went home. The next day they found it there. I was disappointed but she said that someday I would find it."

Brian said his grandmother passed away last September.

"It's just really interesting," he said. "Maybe she was looking over us, and it was something to help us get started."

Brian said it has made the rest of his family believers in the game.

"Even my mother is going to get in on it now," he said. "She used to say that we were foolish."