Tony Hawk hid a signed skateboard in the bushes near an entrance sign at La Raza Park on Thursday afternoon, and within an hour, a 43-year-old native Northsider named Joseph Martinez had already claimed it. Martinez, who owns a woodworking shop and grew up playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for hours as a kid, said finding the board felt like a flashback to childhood. “I felt like a kid, like I won something,” he said.
The drop was part of Hawk's decade-plus “Finders Keepers” tradition, in which he stashes personal, autographed skateboards in public spots around the country and posts video clues for fans to chase down, according to Ceramic Arts Network. This time the location was La Raza Park in North Denver, and as Denverite reports, Hawk posted a video of himself signing the deck and tucking it away, captioned “Ve a buscarlo. Finders Keepers.” Martinez found it at the park on Thursday, and the same Denverite report notes that Hawk was in town serving as a keynote speaker at a real estate conference before making the drop, a trip Hoodline previously covered.
The Chase Was Fast, But It Kept Drawing a Crowd
According to the Denver Gazette, Hawk posted the video around 4:20 p.m. Thursday, timing the stash to a rainstorm that had just cleared visitors out of the park. Denverites still ran to La Raza Park the moment the post went up, and even after Martinez had already claimed the board, hopefuls kept arriving, per the same Denverite account. Among them was Austin Shepard, a 20-year-old who said one of his first skateboards came from Hawk's brand and called it life-changing. Another latecomer, 26-year-old coffee-shop worker Zachary Hassler, rushed over straight from his shift; he said he would have gifted the board to his boss, an OG skater from the 1980s who Hassler said had once been sponsored. “Tony Hawk is the icon people think of first when they hear skateboarding,” Hassler said.
Martinez, for his part, wasn't in a hurry to leave once he had the board in hand. The Denverite report notes he stuck around the park for about 20 minutes, letting a little boy ride the skateboard and letting the boy's older brother try a kickflip on it. He also let other people at the park snap photos with the deck before he finally headed home with it, planning to keep it as its steward rather than take it out for tricks or grinds. “The skateboard's story is cooler out on the street than hanging in my home,” he said, according to Denverite, though he still intends to bring it home rather than display it publicly.
Why La Raza Park Made the Drop Land Differently
Hawk could have picked any patch of grass in Denver, but La Raza Park carries weight that most city parks don't. The space was known informally by that name among North Denver's Chicano community since the 1970s before Denver City Council unanimously voted in December 2020 to make it official, retiring the Columbus Park name after decades of advocacy, according to CBS Colorado. Denver Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval had initiated that renaming process back in 2020, a step Hoodline reported at the time. In June 2023, the city went further, designating La Raza Park as Denver's third historic cultural district, a status that protects landmarks including its Aztec-pyramid-inspired Kiosko and Emanuel Martinez's sculpture “La Raza Unida,” CBS Colorado reported.
The park's roots run through Denver's Chicano Civil Rights Movement, when it served as an organizing hub for political rallies, youth programs, and summer “splash-ins” at its former public pool during the 1970s and 1980s, according to 9News. It remains a gathering point today: the park hosts the annual Chicano Pride Ride, which drew 7,000 registered motorcycle riders in May and raised $156,000 for Latino higher education scholarships, per reporting shared by journalist Jeremy Jojola. The park also just reopened in May following a $2 million, year-long renovation funded through city bond programs that added a new playground, an upgraded basketball court, ADA-compliant pathways, and updated plaza lighting, according to Front Range Focus.
Not Hawk's First Unannounced Denver Stop
Thursday's stunt wasn't Hawk's first spontaneous Denver moment. He made an unannounced appearance at the downtown Denver Skatepark in May 2024, skating with residents and signing autographs while in town for his son's graduation, according to reporting cited by Unofficial Networks. Autographed Hawk skateboards like the one Martinez now owns typically resell for between $200 and $600 on secondary markets outside of charity auctions or major competitions, the Denver Gazette reported, though Martinez has given no indication he plans to sell it.
