Colonie

Bobby Dennis ran into Professor Java's Coffee Sanctuary on Monday morning. He was in too much of a hurry to wait for his mother, who was parking the car at the Wolf Road business.

The Latham 10-year-old looked left, right and all over — he wasn't messing around. Bobby was hunting for a $20 bill. He was worried that he wouldn't be the one to find it; after all, the clue to the bill's whereabouts had been posted on the Find A Twenty Facebook page an hour earlier.

Bobby made a beeline for a table where he found the bill and triumphantly raised it in the air.

"I'll probably buy more Transformers, maybe more Legos," he said, smiling.

It's the smiles that make hiding the money worth it for Leo Quinn, a 46-year-old Ballston Spa entrepreneur.

Quinn began hiding cash in January, and has since hidden 34 bills around the area, only one of which wasn't claimed.

"It's interesting, fun and it gets people's attention," he said. "I'm sure people think there is a catch, like I'm selling religion or something, but I'm not. I hope they use it at a small business, but they don't have to."

Quinn said he believes that what people give, they get back. The connections with small business owners also help him get more customers for his marketing agency, iMarketing Support. Quinn also runs the site 518birthdayclub.com, which links to deals throughout the Capital Region that can people get on or around their birthdays.

The idea of hiding money and posting clues online came from Plenty of Twenties, a website that was started in 2011 by Steven Grant and Richard Cook in Boston, who hid $20 bills and posted clues to their locations.

Quinn bought the domain names, but it wasn't until they were set to expire in 2013 that he decided to start his own version.

"I don't have that kind of budget," Quinn said about hiding money daily. "I do it whenever I have an extra $20 and happen to be out and about."

He's hidden cash in greeting cards, grocery stores, a cannon in a Ballston Spa cemetery and even at farmers markets. On Travers Stakes race day he posted a GPS location for a cash stash at Saratoga Race Course. And he's had people come from as far as Hudson Falls to search for, and find, money in Troy.

Quinn said he'd eventually like to have businesses sponsor the hidden money game, as he did with Howie's Jewelers in Troy last week.

For fans like Connie Beardslee, 52, of Malta it's more about the thrill of the chase than it is the money.

"It's like a scavenger hunt," Beardslee said.

She heard of the site from a friend who found one of the first hidden bills. In January Beardslee found one at the Clifton Park library.

"I felt secretive," she said about looking for the book the money was in. "I felt like it was stealing almost." Beardslee said she couldn't even walk after finding it. "I was, like, skipping."

She used the money to take her mother and husband to a movie.Beardslee also found a second bill at a dollar store down the road from her house, where she spent her spoils on toys and games or her grandchildren."You kind of pay it forward," Beardslee said.

kclukey@timesunion.com • 518-454-5467 • @kclukey_TU