This Golden Raspberry Isn’t ‘Trash’

Joey Prusak was searching for the Golden Raspberry on Thursday morning when his father saw him pick up something by the Fire Department’s green electrical boxes.

“What, did you just pick up a piece of trash?” joked Prusak’s father, who’d just arrived.

“Well, if you call this trash,” Prusak answered as he held up this year’s Golden Raspberry medallion, a find that won him a $500 cash prize.

Prusak is a Hopkins resident through and through. He graduated from Hopkins High School in 2012, manages the Mainstreet Dairy Queen and was even the 2001-02 Rasperry Festival junior king.

His discovery wasn’t a fluke, but he hadn’t been searching for the medallion since the beginning like some hardcore treasure hunters. Prusak just started yesterday when his mom called and said she and Prusak’s 9-year-old sister planned to head out search.

They’d seen Wednesday’s clue—“Why are they playing wiffle ball in the hockey rink?”—and asked Prusak where if he had any idea what the clue was talking about.

“I knew exactly where that was,” he said.

After work, he and his sister spent two-and-a-half hours searching around the hockey rink near the Pavilion. There was one clue that kept stumping them, though: “Wow! Look at all the green that surrounds me!” They looked in grass, bushes and tress but never found anything.

At about 7:45 a.m. he went to the Fire Department intent on finding the medallion. There were several people there looking through the greenery, but Prusak steered clear.

“I felt that it would be too obvious,” he said.

Then he had a moment of inspiration when he noticed the Fire Department’s electrical boxes are green. There was a woman searching near there, but she left as Prusak headed over.

He started searching and found the medallion beneath one of the boxes just as his father arrived.

Prusak already knows how he plans to spend the money: He has a passion for racing at Shakopee’s Raceway Park and can always use upgrades and replacement parts for his car.

“$500 could go a long ways,” he said.