Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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Keith McCord ReportingLast night we told you the story about a delivery truck driver who found thousands of dollars worth of US Savings Bonds and wanted to return them to the owner. With a little help from Eyewitness News that happened today.
Tyler Thorpe: "I believe I have something for you!"
Jason Elsner: "Wow, I can't believe you dug them out of the snow for me."
Tyler Thorpe happily handed over more than 50 U.S. Savings Bonds to the man who owns them, Jason Elsner. The face value of the bonds is more than 10-thousand dollars!
Jason Elsner: "When I saw them on the news the other day it was kind of weird. I mean there's my name and my old address on there. It was something else."
Elsner is referring to our story on Wednesday night, when Thorpe, who drives for a package delivery service, showed us where he found the bonds on West Temple, scattered on the ground in front of a house. We were able to track down Elsner, who told us that his savings bonds were stolen out of a storage unit last summer.
Jason Elsner: "These were actually in a safe inside the storage unit and that was the mistake I made. Stuff like this should have never been in the unit. I should have gotten a safety deposit box."
Elsner had just completed six years of service with the Air Force, served two tours in Iraq, when he got a job here. Before he found a place to live he put all of his belongings in a storage unit. Everything was stolen, including several of his Iraq service medals.
Jason Elsner:"I'd hate to think that they ended up in the trash too, they're meaningless to anybody other than myself."
Elsner stays in contact with police detectives on his case. So far only these bonds have been recovered.
Another interesting thing we learned about this story is the men work very close together. Elsner works in the control tower at Salt Lake International and Thorpe works a quarter mile down the road, at DHL.
Elsner has some advice for all of us-- take photos of our belongings; put a mark on them so we can ID them; write down serial numbers. He learned the hard way. The Treasury Department replaced the stolen bonds so the torn and tattered one's found by Thorpe are just souvenirs now, but it's still very much appreciated. And yes, Elsner, has the new savings bonds tucked away in a safety deposit box!
