Homeless Man Reunited With Long-Lost Bank Account..South Tampa-Hyde Park Patch:

http://patch.com/florida/southtampa/homeless-man-reunited-long-lost-bank-account
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The man lived on downtown Tampa’s streets for about three years until a cop and a case worker stepped in to help.
by Sherri Lonon (Patch Staff) updated April 16, 2015



John Helinski, 62, was once a member of Tampa’s “invisible” population.

Homeless for about three years, his address was a cardboard box placed near a downtown Tampa bus stop. “(I was) sleeping underneath the benches there and no one would see me,” he explained to ABC news.

Life was hard, but he managed to scrape by.

Those scraping by days came to an end recently when Helinski met DACCO case manager Charles Inman and Tampa Police Officer Dan McDonald. The two pooled their resources to help get Helinski the proper identification needed to secure services on his behalf – a birth certificate, Social Security card, driver’s license. His identification had been stolen from him at some point, McDonald said.

As they began navigating the system to restore the Polish-born American citizen’s identification papers, they came across a bank account in his name. That bank account was opened by Helinski long before at the former Landmark Bank. By the time the branch became a Bank of America location, Helinski had forgotten about the account and the Social Security benefits that had been stacking up in his name.
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A really nice story about a homeless man, and two nice people who helped him get out of living in that cardboard box that he had been in for three years. This one brightened up my day.. worth linking to