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Detectives return the $4,000 found recently by two boys to its owner, who was golfing. He didn't share his name but said the boys would receive a reward.
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 16, 2002
TAMPA -- He is 75 years old, loves to golf and is in town until Sunday on business.
He also is an intensely private person who does not want to talk to the media or even the police, if he can help it.
The elusive Chicago resident is the owner of $4,000 in cash discovered near a bus stop by two honest schoolboys this week, police said. To add to the mystery, the man has asked authorities not to release his name.
Until he gave the man back his money Friday, about the only thing Tampa police Investigator Michael Wirth could say about the man was that "he sounded like a nice man" on the phone.
The man told Wirth he would be golfing Friday, and instructed him to deliver the money to him on the University of South Florida golf course.
On Friday afternoon, the investigator hopped onto a golf cart and gave back the man's missing money, which police had converted to a check.
"He smiled, said he was very happy, said he was going to take care of the people who turned the money in, now let me continue my golf game," said Wirth, who said the exchange lasted less than two minutes.
Wirth said the man was adamant about rewarding the two Greco Middle School students who found the money -- Jarvarious Jones and Oscar Carter, both 13 -- and the school officials who helped the boys turn the money in to police.
School officials said Friday afternoon that they hadn't heard from the man, and were planning some sort of reward for the boys on their own.
Vice principal Patricia A. Cooper, who counted the money when the boys turned it in, said she does not want any compensation.
"I just want the boys to be rewarded," she said. "I got my reward with their honesty. They are our heroes."
The boys found the money in several envelopes near their bus stop at 50th Street and Temple Heights Road about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
That was shortly after the man had left his hotel room, which Wirth would not identify, to meet a friend at the International House of Pancakes on Busch Boulevard and 30th Street. The restaurant is about a mile away from where the money was found.
When the man got to the restaurant, he discovered that his money was missing, Wirth said. He checked his pockets, which still had $600 in cash, but could not find the envelopes, one of which had his first and last name written on it (the other three envelopes had just his first name).
The envelopes belonged to the Fifth Third Bank.
As the man searched his car, the restaurant parking lot, the hotel parking lot, and then his hotel room, the boys were turning over the money to their school administrators. Their honesty drew the attention of police officers and the media. The man saw a report on a local television station and called Wirth.
It was initially reported that the boys had no rights to the money, even if it went unclaimed. But Florida law states that property not claimed by the owner within 90 days goes to the finder -- with the exception of guns, knives and drugs.
The boys might be rewarded in other ways. A number of people have called the school, wanting to contribute to a fund for the boys.
As for the mystery man, Wirth wouldn't reveal the reason he was carrying around so much cash.
All he would say was, "(The reason) is very good."