On February 25th, four total strangers – Alex Gamble, Usman Akeju, Ciji Thornton, and Will LaFerriere – went on the run in a contest connected to the new movie from Universal Pictures, Repo Men. Wired, Universal, andLone Shark Games then enlisted the public to try to track them down. If the runners could avoid being caught for 30 days, they would win $7,500. If a hunter found them before the 30 days were up, he or she keep the $7,500. The contest was based on the #Vanish contest that Wired ran last summer.
For the first ten days, the runners appeared to be well out of the reach of the hunters. To make it possible for hunters to find them, the four had to send in pictures and video of tasks they had to complete each day. These were posted online, but the hunters didn’t seem to be getting much closer. Little progress appeared to have been made even after the rules were set so that the location of one hunter each day would be revealed to the runners.
Confidence turned to carelessness. And on March 9th, Usman’s location was revealed to the hunters in the form of a cryptic clue—a sketch of a doctor wearing a green belt—that the hunters determined in a matter of minutes meant “Greenbelt, MD.” Usman however wasn’t paying attention to what the hunters were talking about. Kate Majewski, known as @gconventional on Twitter, however, was. The Maryland location, plus the fact that Usman’s task for the day was to go to a skating rink, pinpointed him to one of only a few places.
Majewski lives near Greenbelt and she hit the ground running. She searched the skating rinks in the area, and noticed that only one was their possible location – the only skating rink that was open, accessible, and had a time for open skating in the area. She hopped on a bus, trudged through the mud, and got to the rink right after the free skate started. She waited outside for Usman to show up, likely with Ciji in tow — there had been clues the day before that the two might be together.
After a few minutes outside, she noticed a pickup truck with people inside, watching her. It turned out to be other hunters, waiting to make the same catch she was after, but she worried it was Usman and Ciji and that she would scare them off. So she went inside, and started to skate.
She half-skated, half-spied for a few minutes, until she noticed a girl with bright red hair and what looked like piercings getting skates. Ciji! GConventional quietly went and got her camera, took Ciji’s picture, and said the magic words: “you’ve been repo’d.”
Already $7,500 richer, GConventional found Usman skating, taking a video of his feet, across the rink. She caught up to him, took his picture, and repo’d him as well.
In one evening, GConventional caught two of the four runners and pocketed a cool $15,000. She’s going to remain on the hunt, going after Will and Alex, but admittedly doing “a little less legwork.” Her advice to other hunters? Do what Usman didn’t: “keep up with the information stream, and always try to stay one step ahead.”
She promised the dejected runners she’d buy them dinner with her bounty, as well as some of her fellow hunters who helped her track them down. The rest of the cash? She’ll be paying off debts, and getting a tattoo of the “Union,” the organization in the film, and in the hunt, that hands out clues.
For more information on the hunt, and to find out how you can help track Alex and Will — and win $15,000 yourself if you get them before March 25th, head to www.wiredinsider.com/repomen and follow the hunt on twitter by searching for #repomen.
-by David Pierce
