Q. I heard something on National Public Radio about a Web site where you can see if you have any unclaimed property. Is there something like that for Hawai'i?

A. Yes, there is something locally that's fairly easy to use. It may be about the closest thing to found money besides stumbling over a $10 bill on a sidewalk.

The state has about $115 million of unclaimed property it wants to give to the rightful owners. This generally is made up of cash, checks not cashed, unclaimed bank accounts, stock certificates and in some cases, contents of safety deposit boxes, said Scott Kami, who oversees the program for the state Department of Budget and Finance.

The program is funded by the interest generated by the unclaimed cash and is administered by the state as a public service. Companies can give the state the custodianship of accounts that have been dormant for five years. Each year about $10 million to $12 million is added to the cache of unclaimed property.

The average claim is a little more than $600, with the largest payout so far being about $400,000 owed to heirs of an estate who a trust company couldn't locate, Kami said. Last year more than $5.1 million was paid out.

Kaimuki resident Jolie Zimmerman said she found several hundred dollars for her mother, grandmother, brother and friends when she recently checked a Web site for unclaimed property in other states.

"I was blown away how much money I found," said Zimmerman, 43. This included a check from an insurance company and mutual fund shares.

For Hawai'i, you can either go on the state Web site or call (see box) the Hawai'i Unclaimed Property Program to see if you're owed anything.

The Web site is as easy to use as filling in your first and last name and hitting the search button. One tip is to search for all possible names under which you've kept accounts. If you go by Joe Smith, search for that and Joseph Smith.

I did a search and found I had $24.50 from a cable television deposit I'd forgotten about in the chaos of moving to take a job in San Francisco eight years ago. I also found $5.50 for my father in a bank account he'd had when we lived on Wilhelmina Rise in the 1960s.

Other searches turned up some interesting results and raised questions about how much time companies spend searching for you if a check is returned to them as being undeliverable. Deceased actor Jack Lord has a $73.24 check from the Spelling Entertainment Group, while U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie had three checks totaling more than $50 from local companies.

The state doesn't charge a fee to give you the money, but will make you fill in a form requiring your name, address and/or Social Security number, daytime telephone number and an explanation of why the money is yours. You may have to provide further documentation to get the money.

You also may have private firms contact you saying you are owed money and will get it for you for a fee or percentage of what's been found. Before acting on these, you should check with Hawai'i unclaimed property program or similar offices in other states to see if you can find the property on your own. That way it won't cost you anything.

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators estimates there is more than $24 billion of unclaimed assets in the U.S. Last year more than $1.2 billion was paid out on at least 1.3 million claims.

You can check other states by finding links on the association's Web site, www.unclaimed.org, or a related Web page, www.missingmoney.com. The later allows you to perform searches covering 34 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Kami said Hawai'i is evaluating whether it should be included in the www.missingmoney.com search engine and that in the past it has balked at the site's requirements and information sharing.

If you do go to www.missingmoney.com, be sure to click on the "related links" feature.

There you'll find other sites where you can perform unclaimed property searches, including whether you may have pension benefits coming to you that haven't been collected or have a refund coming from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for mortgage insurance.

Do you have a question about personal finance, taxes or other money matters? Reach Akamai Money columnist Greg Wiles at 525-8088 or gwiles@honoluluadvertiser.com