A New San Francisco Scavenger Hunt Is Worth the PURSUIT

There are regular scavenger hunts and then there is PURSUIT, a series that lasts an entire month, traverses the length and breadth of San Francisco and includes 11 separate puzzles — or “missions” as the organizers like to call them. Time-strapped participants can skip as many missions as they wish without impacting their ability to complete the others.

PURSUIT, which starts on July 12, is the brainchild of Danielle Egan, Athena Leong and Riley Walz, who roped in at least 12 other friends to make it happen. (Walz’s name may already be familiar to fans of Bop Spotter, the hidden phone in the Mission that logs what people are listening to on the street and turns it into a free, ever-growing online playlist.) The trio are all San Francisco residents in their 20s who set up PURSUIT for the sheer fun of it.

Leong tells KQED in a phone call that PURSUIT is simply about “the friends you make along the way, the memories you make along the way.”

“Primarily,” Leong, who is originally from Singapore, continues, “we’re doing this because we want people to explore San Francisco. We want them to see the beauty in this amazing city. There are so many hidden gems that you might not find unless you really go look, you know?”

Egan, Leong and Walz all work in tech — something that has enhanced how parts of the missions play out. Anonymous equipment donors were called upon to assist in setting up some of PURSUIT’s more technologically-inspired components. And yet at its core, PURSUIT is scrappy enough to attract users the old-fashioned way: curious flyers posted around the city featuring a phone number to text.

Once the number from the flyer is contacted, users receive a text from PURSUIT’s mascot, Percy — the smiling line-drawn fellow above. The text says:

I’m Percy, and this is PURSUIT! An epic scavenger hunt around SF, made by a bunch of friends. We’ll send the first clue Saturday morning!

2025 is PURSUIT’s second year in action. Leong tells KQED that last year, the hunt received 3,000 enquiries via text message and that 1,000 of those texters completed at least one mission. Since some of those participants were working in groups or with family members, the exact number of people who took part in the scavenger hunt is impossible to calculate.

Though this year’s PURSUIT stops will be completely different to anything that happened in 2024, Leong tells me that one of her favorite missions last year took place in Chinatown. Participants were tasked with hunting for special symbols throughout the neighborhood, solving a puzzle, finding a bakery, whispering a code word, then receiving a fortune cookie with another clue in it to get to the next stop. (Getting local businesses to join in the games is also part of PURSUIT’s mission.)

When asked if PURSUIT was in any way inspired by the infamous Jejune Institute scavenger hunt, which lasted three years between 2008 and 2011, Leong says it wasn’t, but that she and her friends love the concept.

“We think that was really cool,” she explains. “It all ties into the lore that San Francisco is a mysterious place where things like this can happen.”

PURSUIT’s first mission commences on July 12, 2025. Folks wishing to participate should text (415) 888-9518 and await further instruction.