Although I don't ever expect to find my name, I always scour the unclaimed property lists that these days take up more space in the local newspaper than actual news. I look for the names of my family members, too.
Hey, you never know. After all, the fact that the list exists means that most of us don't expect we have money coming to us from an unknown or forgotten source.
When the list first appeared over the weekend, I noticed something curious. The Milwaukee Police Department has something in common with Jamaican-American record shops of the past.
While the city and county lists are all alphabetized traditionally, the police list is alphabetized by first name!
Yes, Ahmed Khan is first on the list and Wal-Mart -- which is due $100 -- is last.
And that's another interesting thing. A lot of businesses have unclaimed property.
Wal-Mart appears frequently and has seven amounts totaling $645 in the Milwaukee County Treasurer Office list alone.
How does General Motors Acceptance Corp. of Brookfield not know there's $286 out there with its name on it? Are their computers not working? Is there a Y2K8 issue I didn't hear about?
The ones that really make me wonder are the listings for folks like Cudahy's Carole J. Peters. I've misplaced a 20-spot every now and again and certainly there's some stray change under the seat of my car, but Peters has $21,178.73 waiting for her and apparently doesn't know.
Of course, she may have moved or worse, moved on, but if she left town, you'd think she'd remember to pick up that 21-large before locking the door on the U-Haul.
West Allis' Karen Ross is sitting on nearly $23,000 and doesn't seem to know. I hope she gets the paper and has darn good vision or at least a magnifying glass.
And, hey, if Ross and Peters don't want their cash, there are plenty of non-profits around that could use it. I bet our metropolitan public schools, for example, could put the thousands of dollars listed on the eight pages of unclaimed property to good use.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
