Watch as Fort Collins man discovers $200K wish lamp

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KXRM) — Fernie Martinez and his family are $200,000 richer this week after being awarded their prize for discovering a wish lamp hidden at Kings Chef in Downtown Colorado Springs .

The story quickly gained traction in Colorado Springs. Many had probably driven past the iconic Kings Chef purple castle on East Costilla Street, never knowing that a genie-style lamp worth $200,000 was inside a utility box façade, waiting for a dedicated treasure hunter to find it.

Fernie Martinez was that treasure hunter. He followed clues, did meticulous research and dove into the history, geography and architecture of Colorado Springs, all in pursuit of the wish lamp hidden by Treasure Games creator Dirk Gibson. Martinez made multiple trips from his home near Fort Collins, hours south to Colorado Springs, and kept whittling down clues that would eventually lead him to the lamp at Kings Chef on his fourth and final trip to Colorado Springs.

Treasure Games recently released its security footage of the moment Martinez found the lamp. You can’t help but smile as you watch him slowly realize what’s happening after all the work he put into finding this token — a token that could have been anywhere in a region that included Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The security footage begins with Martinez seemingly wandering around the west side of Kings Chef, although he said during a press conference that he recognized a rug on the floor from a clue he had purchased through the Treasure Games app. He looks around at the wall of the purple castle until he lays eyes on the faint imprint of the words “Property of Treasure Games” on one of the utility boxes.

Martinez audibly gasps and immediately whips out his phone to record a selfie video. He shows his surroundings, which include the front of Kings Chef, and begins to document as he scans numerous codes through the Treasure Games app on a second phone to unlock the utility box — which it turns out is not a utility box at all.

Martinez comments multiple times that he is shaking as he scans the codes one by one, eventually popping open the metal case and revealing the bronze wish lamp. He gets emotional when he realizes what he’s done. In an instant, after months of searching and tediously combing through clues, he’s become almost a quarter of a million dollars richer.

“Here it is,” Martinez proudly exclaims as he pulls the lamp from the box. “I’m getting a little emotional. We’ve been searching for this as a family and, here it is.”

After propping his phone up to continue recording, the first thing he does is let his family know. He texts a selfie with the lamp to his wife and begins to cry tears of happiness as he waits for her call. “I wish my kids were here,” you can hear him say through tears as he pulls the phone down from recording the video.

“This place wasn’t even my destination,” Martinez said to his wife on the phone. “I came to get breakfast, and I was like, ‘Oh I’ll get breakfast there,’ and look — I didn’t expect this at all!”

At a press conference on Tuesday at Kings Chef, Martinez and his family accepted their winnings, and Martinez was also given an extra $10,000 to disperse to causes he cares about. Habitat for Humanity, Animal Friends Alliance and Cambodian Children’s Fund all received $3,000, with the remaining $1,000 being given to fellow treasure hunters as a continuation of a tradition that began at the first Treasure Games award ceremony.

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