Homeless Man Reunited With Long-Lost Bank Account

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.

The first clue a bank account might exist came when McDonald took Helinski to the Social Security office to look into getting him a temporary ID card.

“He (Helinski) was under the impression he wasn’t getting any benefits,” McDonald told Patch. “We got him a temporary ID and I just asked him some questions.”

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As it turned out, Helinski was not only getting benefits, they had been piling up for some time. The money was going into that long-forgotten account.

McDonald’s next move was to help Helinski claim the money that was rightfully his.

“(We) walked in the front door (at Bank of America) and asked for help,” McDonald said. “They found his account and reactivated it. He had a decent amount of Social Security that had been accumulating. He’s (now) got monthly income in addition to his nest egg.”

That nest egg adds up to more than enough for Helinski to secure permanent housing, ending those cardboard box days once and for all, McDonald said.

That discovery and its ramifications have left Helinski “exhilarated” and “excited,” ABC noted.

As for McDonald, he’s thrilled with the outcome. “When something comes out of the ordinary like this it’s nice,” he said.

The Tampa Police officer has spent the last three years serving as a liaison between the city’s homeless residents and service providers that can help them.

“My sole job is to work with the homeless and try to get them off the streets,” McDonald said. “We try to address the root causes of (their problems) and help them with their issues and get them into housing.”

McDonald said he often works in partnership with DACCO’s Community Housing Solutions Center, which opened up on North 50th Street in Tampa last December. Helinski, in fact, was one of its first clients.

The Tampa Police Department’s homeless initiative began three years ago when McDonald took the job. The agency now has two officers dedicated to helping the chronically homeless get back on their feet. McDonald said both Tampa officers also work frequently in cooperation with the five deputies the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has dedicated to a similar mission.

Hillsborough County’s homeless population was estimated at 2,243 men, women and children in 2014, down from 2,275 in 2013, according to The Tampa Tribune. The county conducts an annual survey to count its numbers of homeless to obtain funding for services, such as housing, and to plan programs to benefit the homeless.

The Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative is responsible for conducting the county’s annual homeless count. That organization is also tasked with coordinating services in the community while administering funding from federal, state and local sources to the housing and services programs that can best assist the homeless population, it explains on its website.

DACCO is a community-based provider of substance abuse and mental health treatment programs and homeless services. It seems it also gets credit, along with the Tampa Police Department, for occasionally helping a once-homeless person find a windfall.

Helinski has not yet found a home of his own, but McDonald said with his identification restored and income stable, that’s ”the easy part.” The folks at the DACCO center are helping in the search, he added.

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Editor’s note: This story was updated at 7:21 p.m. April 16 to include more information from Tampa Police Officer Dan McDonald.

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