A homeless man from Florida who had been living in a cardboard box for over three years, got the surprise of his life when police discovered a forgotten bank account.
62-year-old John Helinski from Tampa was completely unaware that he had a bank account that had been collecting social security disability benefits for years.
The amount is so high that he can now use the money to get a place of his own.
Officer Daniel McDonald from Tampa Police Department first met John after he paid a visit to the DACCO Community Housing Solutions Center last December.
Together with Charles Inman of Drug Abuse and Comprehensive Coordinating Office Inc, the two men worked to help John recover all his personal identification documents to get him into some housing.
“As a homeless liaison officer, the bread and butter of my work often involves hopping department to department trying to help homeless people find the ID they need in order to get things like work and housing,” McDonald told ABC Action News.
Since John’s documents had been stolen while he was out on the streets, he would need something temporary for the time being.
“First, I drove him personally to the local tax collector’s office, where he was able to get a temporary State of Florida ID card,” McDonald explained.
John mentioned that he used to receive benefits, however he was under the belief that they had been canceled.
Daniel decided to take it upon himself to find out if this was actually the case.
“With his consular birth certificate and temporary ID, we went to the Social Security office, and I just walked up to them and said, ‘This man used to have benefits, can you help us?’” McDonald said.
Eventually, John, who used to live in Poland, was given access to his birth record- and that’s when he discovered that he’d been receiving benefits this whole time.
His temporary ID card gives him access to his account, and thanks to his benefits, it’s likely that he will be able to move into permanent housing very soon.
After all those years in a cardboard box, John will soon have a whole house of his own.
The undisclosed amount will be enough to cover rent and food costs for John, without him having to work.
John’s case manager Inman couldn’t have been happier with the result.
“This situation looked really difficult, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to end up,” Inman told ABC News today. “If it failed, it meant we’d put a 62-year-old man on the street, and Officer McDonald and I were not OK with that.”
Daniel hopes that this story will encourage other homeless people to come forward and receive help.
“We’re uniformed cops with police cars, but we want homeless people to trust us,” he said. “Our job is not to arrest someone. It’s to help them. Homeless people are still accountable to the law, but they’re now starting to see we can be trusted, and this new model and field of policing is gaining popularity very quickly, I think.”
We wish John all the best in his new home! Take a look at his interview below.
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