My Son Is An Attorney Who Stole My $5.8m Life Savings And Made Me Homeless. He Told The World I Was Senile To Cover His Gambling Debts. How Do I Recover When My Own Child Leaves Me For Dead?

I didn’t recognize the person in those photos anymore.

“Grandpa, what’s this?”

Pearl held up a small fireproof box. I’d forgotten about it.

It had been my father’s, passed to me after he died in 2003. I’d stuck it in storage and never opened it.

The key was still taped to the bottom. Inside, we found papers—lots of papers.

My father’s discharge papers from World War II, his Purple Heart certificate, letters he’d written to my mother during the war, and at the bottom, a sealed envelope addressed to me in his handwriting.

My hands shook as I opened it.

“Richard,” the letter began.

“If you’re reading this, I’m gone, and I’m sorry I never got to tell you this in person. I was never good with words when I was alive. Your mother was the talker in our family.”

“There’s a safety deposit box at First National Bank downtown, box number 342. The key is in this envelope. Inside, you’ll find something I’ve kept hidden for 77 years since 1948.”

“After the war, I was broke. Your mother and I had nothing. I’d lost my job. We were living in a one-room apartment with you as a baby. A veteran friend told me about war bonds. The government was selling them to help pay off war debt.”

“He said they were safe and would grow over time. I bought bonds with every spare dollar we had—$58 worth. It was all the money in the world to us then.”

“Your mother never knew. I was ashamed I’d spent our grocery money on what she would have called a gamble. Then I got a good job at Boeing, and we didn’t need the bonds anymore.”

“I meant to cash them out, but I kept forgetting. Years turned into decades. I checked on them once in 1985 and saw they’d grown to about $4,000, and figured I’d leave them for emergencies. This is your emergency, son. Use it wisely.”

“In war, I learned that sometimes you need to protect yourself before you can protect others. You can’t help anyone if you’re destroyed first. I love you. I’m proud of the man you became. Give hell to whoever hurt you. Dad.”

A small brass key fell from the envelope. Pearl and I stared at each other.

“Grandpa, when did your dad die?”

“22 years ago. 2003.”

“So these bonds have been sitting there since 1948? Almost 80 years?”

We went to the bank first thing Monday morning. The safety deposit box was still registered under my father’s name, but I had his death certificate and the key.

The bank manager, a young woman named Christine, looked up the account. Her face went pale.

“Mr. Foster, this box has been here since 1948. The annual fee was paid through an automatic account withdrawal that—wow. Okay, let me get my supervisor.”

An older man came out, read something on the computer screen, and immediately asked us to follow him to a private office.

“Sir, are you aware of what’s in this box?”

“War bonds. My father left them to me.”

He typed something, then swiveled his monitor toward me.

The bonds were there, yes. 140 bonds, $50 face value each, but that wasn’t what made me grip the armrest of my chair.

War bonds accrue compound interest. For bonds issued in 1948, the rate was 2.9% annually, compounded monthly.

“But these weren’t just any war bonds,” the supervisor explained.

“These are Series E Defense Bonds from 1941—Pearl Harbor bonds. Your father must have bought them just after the attack and kept them in safe deposit. When the government transitioned to Victory Bonds in ’42, Mr. Foster, these bonds stopped earning interest at 30 years. But their collector value—”

He pulled up an auction site. A single Pearl Harbor defense bond in good condition was worth $2,800. I had 140 of them.

“Approximately $392,000,” he said quietly.

“Plus the accrued interest to 1971, which brings the total cash value to about $498,000.”

“But sir, there’s more,” he pulled up another screen.

“Your father also had a life insurance policy through Veterans Affairs from 1962. $50,000 face value. It was paid up through automatic bank withdrawals from the bond account. With accumulated dividends and interest, the payout is $498,000.”

My father—the man who’d worked on a Boeing assembly line for 40 years, who’d lived in a modest house and driven used cars, who’d worried about making ends meet—had left me close to $1 million.

I sat in that office and cried for the second time in two months. But these weren’t tears of despair. Pearl hugged me.

“We can fight now, Grandpa. We can win.”

Linda Yamamoto nearly fell out of her chair when I told her.

“You found what?”

I handed her the documentation. She read it twice, then started laughing.

“Oh, Jeremy’s going to lose his mind. He stole everything from you, and it turns out you had a million-dollar nest egg he didn’t even know about. The irony is beautiful.”

The Final Verdict and a New Foundation

We used $200,000 to finance the case properly. Linda hired three expert witnesses, a private investigator, and a jury consultant.

We deposed Jeremy and Rachel separately, and their stories didn’t match. The investigator found evidence Jeremy had been cheating at his job too, billing clients for hours he’d spent gambling.

The trial was set for September 2024, but in July, something unexpected happened. Pearl came home from a day spent at the courthouse, her face streaked with tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I saw Dad today in the parking garage. He didn’t see me, but Grandpa, he looked terrible. Like he’d aged 20 years.”

She showed me a photo she’d taken on her phone. Jeremy did look terrible: gaunt, unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes.