Andrew Feilmeier, 35, of Lincoln collected his check for $2,564 from unclaimed property just before Christmas. It couldn’t have come at a better time, said the self-employed contractor who owns Elite Installation. He paid bills and finished installing a hot tub on his deck. When he first learned about the money from a friend at Big Red Autoplex, he thought the friend was pulling his leg. “You’re just messing with me,” he told the friend, who insisted Feilmeier check it out. “Wow! He was right.” The money came from MDS Pharma Services where Feilmeier took part in overnight studies when he was in his 20s. “I usually don’t think of myself as a lucky guy,” he said. But that’s all changed, given the success of his business; the growth of his wife Ashley’s custom jewelry making business, Ash and Ash Co.; and the happiness of his children, Sofia, 6, and Liam, 3, not to mention his large extended family. He is the youngest of 105 grandchildren on his father’s side.

Still looking out for his two grown children, James E. Jones, 71, of Omaha thought the newspaper listing for unclaimed property a year ago had to be for his son, who shares his name. He urged his son to check. “He called me back and said, ‘Dad, it’s not mine. I think it’s for you. You better call.’ So I called,” the senior Jones said. As it turned out, the address in the unclaimed property records was the first and only house his parents ever owned. The house at 3013 Webster Street has since been torn down and is now a hospital parking lot. “My mother, who died in 2002, had three small policies with Prudential Life, but when we cleaned out her house, we never found them. We didn’t know these policies existed,” said Jones, who was an only child and close to his mother. “If I hadn’t seen that in the paper, it might still be unclaimed.” Jones, a widower, retired in 2005 as a retail manager for Pillsbury. He volunteers with the Tangier Shrine, driving families to the Shriners Hospital in Minneapolis, and as a chaplain for Eastern Star. He put his $5,108 check for unclaimed property toward a cruise he was already planning.

John Toker grew up in the New York City borough of Queens, and his wife, Mary Lou, came from Louisville, Ky. But for the last 60 years, they have been Nebraskans, making their home first in Hastings and later in Kearney. “I wouldn’t live any other place,” John said. Both are retired from professional lives devoted to education—John as a professor of special education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and an early advocate of mainstreaming children with special needs and Mary Lou as a curriculum development specialist with Educational Service Unit No. 10. “Both of us were born to be teachers,” said Mary Lou. “I learned as much from my students as my students learned from me,” said John. Students taught him about humanity, that everyone has “dreams, hopes, and ambitions, if given a chance.” John was pleased, but not necessarily surprised, at the unclaimed property check for $4,719. An escrow company had called him about the money and said it would be turned over to the state, “which they eventually did.” The Tokers, who have traveled extensively in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United States, put the money in their checking account. “We’re senior citizens. We don’t have any grand plans for traveling anymore,” said John, 88.

When Dan Rutt took the call from the State Treasurer’s Office last year, he thought to himself: “Oh, shoot. What did we forget to do?” As director of Revive, Inc., in Hastings, a non-profit organization that provides counseling, treatment, and housing to people with substance addiction, Rutt has to keep a lot of rules and deadlines in mind. “This is a good call,” the Treasurer’s Office reassured him. Coming as a total surprise, Rutt learned that $4,760 was being held for him from the estate of a man whom Rutt had helped years ago. In his 16-year career in human services, Rutt estimates he has worked with more than 2,000 men and women who were indigent, transient, homeless, estranged from their families, or “just beat up emotionally.” Many, too, were addicted to drugs and alcohol. Simply helping people find housing or a job or sobriety was reward enough, he said. “This was just a blessing that was totally out of the blue.” Rutt and his wife, Suzanne, CASA volunteer coordinator for four counties, tithed a portion of the money and spent the rest on several new windows for their home.

“I love this place,” said Judy Herbst Brown, as she stood in the dining room of the Italianate prairie mansion built by William F. Cody in 1886 on the grounds of what is now Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park in North Platte. Brown had just accepted a check for $8,284.94 from the State Treasurer and was relishing the moment. “I love Buffalo Bill,” she said. It was her affection for the western figure, who died in 1917, that propelled Brown to make sure the matured certificate of deposit that had landed in the state’s unclaimed property holdings finally found its rightful home. When she learned about the unclaimed property for the Friends last year, she discovered the group had disbanded, the long-time president had died, and she was, perhaps, one of the few surviving original members. Through sheer perseverance, she reorganized the group, recruited new members, and provided the necessary documents to claim the matured CD. Officers in addition to Brown, now president, are Ruth Froman of North Platte, secretary, and Mary Tanner of Hershey, treasurer. “Friends raised that money for the Ranch, and to the Ranch I intended it to go,” Brown said.

Like many first born, Cindy Arterburn of Imperial had carefully gone through all the family papers when her widowed mother, Marcia Clark, died in 2007. “I thought I had found all that I needed to find,” she said. “It was a total surprise that there was something I did not come across. I had no idea this even existed.” She was even more surprised when she learned the details, a $14,578 insurance death benefit in her mother’s name. “They found me, which is really fun,” said Arterburn, 57. “I’m not sure how he found me, but he did.” Arterburn texted her two siblings with the news, and the three split the money equally. Arterburn and her husband, John, used her share for a previously planned trip to Italy with her brother, Brian Clark of New York. Rita Clark, who lives in Omaha, used her share to pay bills. Arterburn, a cardiac rehabilitation nurse at Chase County Hospital, was one of 70 hospital employees statewide honored in 2013 by the Nebraska Hospital Association with its “Caring Kind” award.