For years the Louisiana Treasury Department has returned unclaimed money and now they will do the same thing for lost military medals. Treasurer John Schroder says the state legislature gave his office that authority in the last legislative session.
“I believe that once this program gets kicked off that it will be a really good thing to do for the veterans, and we have a lot of them.”
The legislation was sponsored by Abbeville Senator Bob Hensgens.
Schroder says the law would allow the Department to collect lost medals and military paperwork from depositories and return them to the owner, or next of kin. He adds they’ll have to get together and work out the details with banks, safety deposit box companies, and other groups before starting to process.
“We hope to launch something soon, and with some directions on how to check, but we have not received anything yet.”
Generally, when the Department finds “unclaimed property”, they just send you a check, but Schroder says they’ll be learning how to take good care of these precious items before sending them out.
”This will be the only property outside of cash that the department handles because we don’t handle any real property, we just handle cash and paper.”
The medals and paperwork would have to had to sit unclaimed for five years before they could be turned over to the state for distribution.
