He thinks Staten Island is treasure island.
At 6 a.m. this past Saturday, David Hager, 58, and wife Michelle, 51, and two sons, Tyler and Ryan, 21 and 17, started digging in a small park in the forgotten borough.
Hager, who lives in Colorado, believes he has correctly deciphered clues pinpointing buried booty on Staten Island from Byron Preiss’s 1982 book “The Secret: A Treasure Hunt.”
“There were two things [in the book] that nobody could figure out,” Hager, a former geologist and science teacher who now owns a college-planning service, told The Post. “We have this so dialed in. It has to be here.”
In the early 1980s, Preiss supposedly buried casques and keys in plexiglass cases in 12 North American cities. He put elaborate clues in the book as to their whereabouts. Only three of the treasures — in Chicago, Cleveland and Boston — have ever been found. It’s widely assumed that there’s loot somewhere in the five boroughs, but it’s never been located. Preiss died in a car crash on Long Island in 2005.
Hager and family travelled from Denver to spend the holiday weekend digging. They brought battery-operated power drills, shovels and underground cameras with them.
If Hager finds a casque and key, he could exchange the key with the Preiss estate for a specific gemstone — a topaz according to his interpretation of the clues — with an estimated value of $2,000.
The Hagers had to do their digging in the park — the exact name and location they requested not be published — on the sly, since they were not licensed for the excavating.
When a passerby happened by and asked what they were up to, Michelle cagily told him, “We’re looking for Grandpa’s time capsule.”
At various points, Hager counted off steps and told his sons where to dig, as he himself is recovering from a shoulder injury
“Before coming here, we practiced in the backyard,” he said. “We tested different tools and techniques.”
Early on, it seemed as if the family had hit something using the probe, which has a camera attached. Looking at the monitor, Hager said, “It looks like the plexiglass case.”
But, alas, it turned out to be a rock.
Undaunted, the family – mom Michelle dubs her brood “Team Hager” – kept digging, covering a narrow trail of roughly 30 feet.
After five hours, everyone was hungry for lunch, the drill batteries were dead and the underground camera screen was busted. Holes seemed to be everywhere. As the Hager kids took to digging with their hands, David admitted that a break was in order.
“We’re heading to the Airbnb to recharge,” he announced.
The family returned to dig on Sunday and Monday, but they didn’t have any luck. Still, Hager isn’t deterred.
“We’ll be back,” he told The Post on Monday evening, just before his return flight to Colorado.
“We just ran out of time. We’ll return with more equipment, more batteries and be ready to go again.”
