Last week, a Purple Heart and other medals were returned to their rightful owners by the Great Colorado Payback program.
Naturally, after hearing about this heartwarming tale, I immediately called Brian Anderson, spokesman for the Colorado treasurer.
Hey, you never know – maybe I left a bag of cash on the bus, or whatnot.
No luck.
Curious, I asked him how much money the state of Colorado holds in its lost and found program?
Believe it or not: $300 million.
“It’s very easy to lose track of these things,” Anderson tells me. “Utility deposits, payroll checks from seasonable jobs, that sort of thing.”
My editor – who by any standard of common decency owes me a drink – uncovered a couple of hundred of his bucks stashed away after I sent him a link to www.missingmoney.com.
My editor shouldn’t be embarrassed. He may be absent-minded, but so was a guy named Ronald Reagan or “R.W. Reagan,” who has two lost items here in Colorado, according to the state treasurer.
In fact, folks who go by the names Gerald Ford and Richard Cheney also need to come and recover items left here in Colorado.
Locally, there’s a Kenneth Salazar, a Joseph Stengel, a William Owens, a William Ritter and a “B. Beauprez” who pop up in my search.
No Richard Nixon. Thus, no 18 minutes of tape. But you wouldn’t believe the sorts of odd items people misplace.
“We have found everything form wooden teeth to 18 silver bars to antique jewelry to baseball cards,” Anderson recounts. “If it can fit inside of a safety deposit, we’ve probably got it.”
There also are drugs, firearms and ammunition – not to mention an impressive Playboy collection – but more frequently, Anderson explains, he finds innocuous items such as stamp and coin collections and family heirlooms.
“And with the passing of the World War II generation, we’re getting more and more military items,” he adds.
By far the most frequent items, however, are checking and savings accounts.
“There is a five-year time period before property is considered abandoned,” explains Anderson. “If you haven’t initiated contact with a bank – gone to the teller, made an ATM deposit – after that five years ends, they turn over the account to Colorado, and we hold it in a trust fund until it is claimed by its rightful owner.”
The Colorado unclaimed-property program started in 1987. It was the last state in the country to enact such a program.
There is no time limit and no charge for the service. But the state doesn’t keep all this stuff forever.
“The treasurer receives 2,000 safe-deposit boxes every year, and there is only a limited space in the vault,” Anderson explains. “We used to have live auctions, and now we do it over eBay. Typically, we sell items that don’t have intrinsic, heirloom value.”
The proceeds of the sale are credited to the person’s account. Instead of the item, they will get cash.
“Last year, we returned over $10 million,” Anderson says. “But we received $40 million in new property. There were 13,000 claims filed last year.”
How do you get your money?
“It depends on the property involved. Usually it’s as simple as a copy of a driver’s license that shows your address. Sometimes a utility bill. If it is large or involves a probate question, then it gets more involved.”
What he means is this: The more involved things get, the luckier you are.
The Colorado state treasurer currently maintains a list of more than 500,000 names of individuals and businesses, and you can just check your name online.
But, Anderson pleads, please be honest.
When the Great Colorado Payback program first began publicizing the recovery of the 18 silver bars, an earnest sounding man called in and claimed he was quite positive that those “gold bars” were his property.
C’mon, man. I lost those.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 303-820-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
