A local woman has this message for whomever may have found her money pouch with $1,000 cash inside: “If you don’t return it, at least spend it in Haines.”
Tour guide Judy Jacobson said the money amounts to all the tips she earned last summer, which she took to the bank to be made into large bills. She believes she lost the pouch downtown around noon on Dec. 4, possibly outside an office at Second Avenue and Willard Street.
Jacobson counted the money in her car after leaving the bank, and made stops at the power company office on Main Street and a tour office at Second Avenue and Willard before returning home to Letnikof Estates and discovering she didn’t have the money. She was carrying the money in a wallet-sized, navy blue pouch attached to a neck string. It’s printed with the word, “Hemp,” and held no other identification.
“I’m hoping that it’s in some weird place in my house and car, but it’s highly unlikely. I’m pretty reasonably sure it was dropped on the street and picked up,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson has worked 14 years in Haines as a summertime naturalist. She drives a 20-year-old Subaru and scrapes by in the winter. “I get by most of my life. I’m not poor. It’s money I worked hard for and would like to get it back. I could use it.”
Jacobson reported the money missing to police and put an announcement on KHNS about it. She’s said there’s a reward for returning the money, no questions asked. She can be reached at P.O. Box 1158, Haines.
Interim police chief Simon Ford wasn’t optimistic the money, if found, would be turned in at the station. “I don’t think any significant amount of (lost) cash has been turned in since I started here (four years ago). We get wallets sometimes, but not just a bag of money.”