The state treasurer's office has teamed up with the Department of Veterans Affairs to match veterans with more than $1 million in unclaimed assets - such as cash, stock holdings or property abandoned in a safe-deposit box - that are being held by the state.

Letters to the veterans went out Friday explaining that their names potentially match unclaimed assets and urging them to fill out a claim form for the property, state Treasurer Jack Voight said.

It is the first time the treasurer's office has given its lists to another state agency in an attempt to compare information and return property to owners, Voight said. Overall, the state is holding about $300 million in unclaimed assets, he said.

Unclaimed property includes such assets as checking and savings accounts, uncashed checks, securities, stock dividends, insurance claims, wages and child support payments.

When the account holders can't be located, the money gets turned over to the state for safekeeping until the owner - or heir of the owner - can be located, Voight said.

"Wisconsin's veterans and their families have sacrificed so much; the state should go above and beyond to assist them," Rep. Gabe Loeffelholz (R-Platteville), chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Veterans Affairs, said in a statement.

Mike "Gunner" Furgal, adjutant / quartermaster for the Wisconsin Veterans of Foreign Wars, was getting ready Friday to log on to the state treasurer's Web site himself.

Furgal said the realities of military life could contribute to veterans forgetting about accounts or safe-deposit boxes that had been set up at one time.

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