Adam Crisp | Savannah Now | June 13, 2007 [Article spotted by Captain Jack.]

Wedding reception ruined because of high-tech game on Tybee Saturday evening.

Geocaching is supposed to be a harmless game in which techno-savvy treasure hunters use Global Positioning Devices to find trinkets hidden in remote locations.

But a Saturday trek for hidden “treasure” under the Tybee Pavillion turned out to be anything but harmless.

Whoever hid a geocache there decided the best waterproof container would be a pipe with two end-caps. Problem is, that’s exactly what a pipe bomb looks like.

Tybee Police Chief Jimmy Price confirmed Tuesday night that what was initially suspected to be a bomb was actually a geocache.

When beachgoers saw somebody they believed to be a treasure hunter examining the cache and then placing it among other pipes under the pier, Tybee Police and others feared the worst.

The pier and surrounding beach were evacuated. The Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad was called in, and a wedding reception that was supposed to take place on the pier was canceled.

Ashley and Simir El-khoury of North Royalton, Ohio, were married near 18th Street on Tybee around 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

When they arrived at the pier for their dream wedding reception, authorities told them they couldn’t celebrate as planned because a bomb might be ticking just below them.

“They didn’t get to have a moment of their reception,” said Christine Hrapko, the groom’s mother. “They never saw the cake. They never got to listen to their DJ. They never got to eat any of their food. It’s not funny.”

Hrapko couldn’t place an exact dollar figure on the loss. She said about 40 people traveled to Tybee for the wedding; some stayed as long as a week. Only one member of the wedding party was from Chatham County, she said.

The costs are well into the thousands of dollars, but the emotional toll is far greater.

“It was the bride’s dream wedding,” Hrapko said. “Her family vacationed on Tybee when she was a girl, and she always wanted to be married there.”

Hrapko said the couple made the most of a bad situation. They waited out the bomb scare in a nearby parking lot. When it became clear they weren’t going to have their ideal reception, they made due at Fannie’s Restaurant.

“The bride had chocolate cake with whipped cream, and they fed each other cherries,” Hrapko said. “They got to have their dance there on the deck. They were OK with it at the time, but they were crushed the next day.”

Hrapko was surprised to learn her son and daughter-in-law’s reception was spoiled by techno-savvy treasure hunters.

“What? That’s just crazy,” Hrapko said. “Our minds went to the worst while we were waiting. We thought maybe someone didn’t want us to have a nice reception because we were Northerners.”

The ordeal spoiled the newlyweds’ images of Savannah and Tybee Island.

“They are just downright hurt,” Hrapko said. “They didn’t have a honeymoon. The wedding was it. They’ve been together since high school, and this is what she always wanted.

“I just hope their dream could be revived one day.”

What is geocaching?

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers called caches anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container with a logbook and a “treasure” inside – usually toys or trinkets of little monetary value. Hundreds of caches are hidden all over Chatham County.