The furtive joy of discovering a $20 bill in an old pair of jeans is all the proof you'll need: Money found truly is sweeter than money earned.
Uncovering cash that should have been paid to you from private businesses but, through a series of convoluted processes, ended up in the State Controller's vaults –- well, that's not bad either.
The state is holding several billion dollars of unclaimed money owed to millions of individuals or businesses. Think you might have some cash waiting for you? You might be surprised. Give it a whirl here. We'll wait.
And if you are owed money, you have some lofty company:
Politics
Sen. Barbara Boxer has $300 from Health Net waiting for her, which will buy a lot of hair dye, except for in election season when she likes to look old and wise by going gray. San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has $159.96 in credit balances from Bloomingdale's coming her way, while Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is owed a fat $63.85 from T. Rowe Price International. Assembly member Carole Migden is due a $150 refund from the State of Texas (honestly, we have no clue what that's about). And though he's out of a job and his wife slept with Mayor Gavin Newsom, Alex Tourk can look forward to collecting $705.40 owed him by Bank of America.
Former Gov. Gray Davis is owed $1,000 by the Granite Construction company and $84 from an insurance agency. It's remarkable that a politician as effective as Davis was at extorting money from friend and foe alike would let perfectly good cash rot in the controller's account. I'm sure he just doesn't RECALL he's owed it, right?
Sports
Say Hey! Willie Mays is owed $2,546.25 by AmEx. Warriors General Manager Chris Mullin has $100 coming to him from the John Muir/Mount Diablo Health System, which will pay for his next 10 haircuts.
Media
San Francisco Chronicle boss man Phil Bronstein is due $161.52 from two different accounts (…and deceased columnist Herb Caen is owed $589.60 by American General Corp. and Tiffany…) while the Chron has been shorted $2,163 by three different parties.
Hey, Bruce Brugmann! You can finally start paying your interns! The San Francisco Bay Guardian is owed $26 by Pacific Bell (too bad it's not PG&E, really).
Finally, to be fair, I should disclose that the San Francisco Weekly is itself owed a total of $171 by the State of Virginia and Bank of the Orient. Boss, if you don't want it, I've got first dibs. --Joe Eskenazi
