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GRIEGO: In none other than the treasurer's office, family's treasure is found

By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 16, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Who does not love a happy ending?

Had you visited the Capitol on Friday morning, entered on the north side, walked upstairs, scooted past a news conference and arrived at the state Treasurer's Office, you would have witnessed the following:

An Asian woman, 60ish, short hair, stylish, seated at a table, her passport and Colorado driver's license before her. A notary taking due note of the documentation. Papers passing back and forth. Sign here. And here. The woman's daughter and son and her son's wife and a couple of friends and two grandchildren and a few state workers, everyone grinning.

What a wonderful day, we all say. It is raining outside and muggy in this office and the woman's son and family are weary because they drove all night to be here. But we watch and smile.

Then the state treasurer is among us and her face lights as she bends to embrace the woman. What a success story, the treasurer says, and she leads the woman to the closed door of her personal office. The woman takes only a half-step past the threshold before her eyes alight upon the conference table and the possessions it holds and she covers her mouth with her hand and starts to cry.

And this is how Nora Wang was reunited with the family heirlooms she believed she had lost forever.

Cast your mind back to last spring and the annual ritual that is the announcement of the Great Colorado Payback. The forgotten checks sent to old addresses, the abandoned safe- deposit boxes, they find their way to the state Treasurer's Office, where they are catalogued and held in safekeeping. A list is produced and the press is called to spread the word to the public: Check the list. We might have your stuff.

I was among the press and was shown the bulky envelope in the name of Nora Wang sent over by the bank - the surprise of it, full of silken pouches holding jewels, pearl rings, jade necklaces, a Buddha no bigger than a child's thumb, encrusted with diamonds, the coral and gold and silver. Also included were U.S. naturalization papers, dated in 1975, of one Nora Yang - Wang's maiden name - born in Shanghai, China.

You might remember this detective story. I wrote about it in May when I caught the bug that drives Ann McKee, the safe-deposit manager, and Patty White, director of the Unclaimed Property Division, and their boss, state Treasurer Cary Kennedy, each of whom looks at the contents of these envelopes and wonders who and how and why. What is the story here? Ask that once and, that's it, you're a goner, hooked.

McKee and White looked for Nora Wang, tracked her to Taiwan, lost trace. As I said in May, I had access to a super- duper data base, a super-duper colleague and database guru named Burt Hubbard and the time to sort through 37 pages of possible connections. I find an uncle who gives me a number for the son and the son, Alan, calls his mother in Taiwan.

"Mommy," he says, "you listen well. You listen well."

Nora Wang stands, crying, before the family heirlooms, treasures passed down from her grandmother, who inherited them herself. They have great monetary value, yes, but that is not where their power lies, as anyone knows who has ever owned an object passed from the hands of one once loved and now missed. Their power lies in the ability to summon memory, to resurrect, to renew a bond.

So, how did the box end up in a vault in the state Capitol? A series of mix-ups. Wang lived in the United States for 30 years before returning to Taiwan 14 years ago. She believed she had prepaid; letters went to old addresses; her bank changed hands. Her search at the bank turned up nothing. The bank reported the box abandoned in 2005.

Wang told Kennedy that what passed through her mind when her son called was a passage from the Bible: "The thing that is lost, shall be found." She says as soon as she hung up with Alan, she knelt and offered thanks to God. Your will be done, she said.

The inheritance had inspired much prayer since she last saw it 10 years ago. Wang said she used to say, Lord, I have lost many things, which I deserved to lose, but not this. This belongs to my children and to their children.

She looks at the table and opens her arms wide as if to embrace its contents and says: "All these things here, they belong to my family who is gone, except for me. And one day my grandchildren will look at this, and they will think about me."

One of her two grandsons toddles around the room. They are too young to remember this day, but one day, their parents will show them the jade and pearls and gold, and they will tell them the story. Children, they might say, listen well. You listen well.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • August 16, 2008

    9:15 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    sheepherder writes:

    Nice story! I got $350 back from the same program, some overpayment I made on a car that got mailed to an old address.