There could be free money waiting for you

This one is intended to be helpful, and maybe provide a chuckle.

Every so often local newspapers run a few pages of advertising paid for by the Pennsylvania Department of the Treasury, like you see at the top of this column. 

If you are among the majority who no longer read a newspaper, here’s a website that is the department’s listing of unclaimed property.  

About 10% of Pennsylvanians, unbeknownst to them, have free cash waiting.

According to Republican State Treasurer Stacy Garrity (who soon will announce her candidacy for governor) “Treasury receives hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed property every year, often because of something as simple as a misspelled name or an out-of-date address. But let’s be clear: this is YOUR money we’re talking about, and I want to return it to you.”

What kind of an idiot would not know he or she is owned money? you may be thinking.

You are reading one.

That’s where the chuckle comes in.

This goes back a while, waaay back into the last century a/k/a the 20th.

For the 47 years I worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, I received my weekly paycheck, so small it was written on fortune cookie paper, at the office, then located at 400 N. Broad Street, now the address of the Philadelphia Police Department, whose sometimes nefarious activities resulted in several Pulitzer Prizes for The Philadelphia Inquirer, a/k/a Morning Yawn.

But I digress.

I worked for one of the local papers that carried the notice, and idly glanced through my zip code, which is how the listing is arranged, thinking I might see the name of an idiot neighbor.

Instead, I found the name of a different idiot. Me.

WTF?

A minimum of research revealed that it was not a bequest from an expired distant relative, but a paycheck from the office where I was employed.

WTF?

Using all my years of experience in uncovering facts, I pieced together what happened.

I always got my paycheck at the office, as I mentioned.

Except — if I was leaving town for a few weeks on vacation.

In that case, I requested my check be mailed to my home, largely because I didn’t trust all my co-workers.

Anyway, someone in the finance office either mailed my check to an old address, or wrote the wrong address on the envelope.

That falls under the heading of understandable mistake.

What follows is not.

When the post office returned the check to my office, someone did not recognize my name on the envelope. This was surprising, as I worked just three floors from finance, and I had bylines in the paper for about 20 years. Instead of slipping the check into an interoffice envelope, some cluck mailed it in to Treasury, for listing under unclaimed property.

That’s one of the reasons I never allowed myself the luxury of thinking of myself as a Big Shot.

You can’t get a big head when your own co-workers don’t know who you are.

So, that’s the chuckle.

The helpful part is — you never know. Why not check that list for your own name?