Warrant 4.4: Solution

The magical thing you're supposed to realise, after futzing with it for a long time, is that *all of these things have something in common*, which is to say, each of these can be taken as a word-association thingie for a phrase either starring the word "Carmen" or "Sandiego". (Hence, the theme of this puzzle matches the theme of the hunt.)

What next? Well, remove all the Carmens and Sandiegos. You're left with a bunch of words and those numbers on the puzzle; ie,

That's just a simple "take the nth letter of the word" -- so you get R T N T I A E C which, if properly reassembled, spells the answer: INTERACT.