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Now, his search finished, all Mora has to show for his efforts is a massive pile of dirt and orders to hire an engineer who can safely pack it back into the ground.
Officials initially wrongly identified Mora as Norm Enrique.
It all began innocently enough, when Mora, a 63-year-old semiretired musician, decided to take up a new hobby about a month ago.Wanting to get into treasure-hunting, he bought the metal detector -- a White's TM 808 -- off the Internet for about $600.
The machine is geared to find items larger than a coffee can and is specifically designed for gold, Mora said. A company Web site boasts of its ability to track down deeply buried finds: "treasure chests, coin caches, hoards of gold."
Eager to make a find, Mora began scouring his property. Near his front porch, the machine went wild.
"I figured, well, maybe there's something down there -- you would logically conclude, right? So I started digging."
Realizing he would need some help, he enlisted the help of two workers from the Pomona Day Labor Center.
Day after day, one worker would hack away at the bottom of the hole while another used a bucket and pulley to empty out the loose dirt. Mora kept watch.
As the anticipation built, one of the men told Mora that he and his father had done this before in Mexico.
"They said that digging a hole like this, they had been witness to finding gold," Mora said. "He was positive there was something there. It wasn't just me."
Once the hole reached about 25 feet, Mora's ladder wouldn't extend any deeper. The men dug sideways a bit, then down again, making a shelf for the first ladder, and room for another to lead them deeper still.
All the while, the metal detector continued to hint that they were getting closer.
"It was still beeping, and that just gave me the idea to keep digging," Mora said. "I think it's a normal human reaction, especially when you think there might be gold down there."
But after seeing the mound of dirt growing on Mora's lawn and his hired workers descending into the ground for two weeks straight, a concerned neighbor called the city Tuesday to report the odd behavior.
Stunned employees from the city's fire, police and building departments showed up late in the afternoon, amazed at what they found. Code enforcement officials posted a red "stop work" ticket near the hole, citing a code violation for the "hazardous excavation."
"It was an obvious life-safety issue," said Troy Ament, deputy fire chief. "Anytime we come across that, we need to cease that operation."
Mora remained extremely cooperative and friendly throughout, Ament said. He won't face any trouble, other than the orders to hire the engineer and reimburse the city for the fencing around the hole, Ament said.
On Wednesday, neighbors stared at the TV news vans lining their quiet cul-de-sac, some still surprised that the dirt mound on Mora's lawn was part of a search for gold.
"I have seen the digging, but I thought they were probably going to construct something," said Carmen Verdin, a Pomona woman who visits her mother's home at the end of Granada Street each day. "I had no idea."
Jordy Bolanos, who lives across the street from Mora, said he had been following the treasure hunt's progress from the first day his neighbor started shoveling.
"He told me he was going to dig because his metal detector was beeping there," Bolanos said. "Then he just kept digging."
Mora said he has no plans to give up hunting for treasure. But next time, he'll venture farther away from home -- Peru, perhaps.
Just recently, he saw a story on the Internet about a robot tracking down an underwater cache of gold coins and jewelry in South America.
"When you see stuff like that, you go, `Hey, I may have something. Maybe I've got a few gold bars,' " Mora said. "I took a chance."