It is not every day that $1,000 ends up in your mailbox.

But that's what happened to Zack Harris. And he didn't have a clue why.

"The first name was misspelled. I thought it was junk mail, but then I saw the watermark and I knew it was the real deal," said the Roseville man, who sensed it was too good to be true.

The nondescript white envelope, with a return address of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Pittsburgh, contained a $1,000 savings bond.

It was redeemable at face value or good for 5 percent annual interest, but was it his?

Harris received the bond Nov. 3 and began a five-day odyssey in phone calls to Pittsburgh; Englewood, N.J.; and San Antonio and Dallas.

In the end, he would come full circle, contacting officials at two Roseville schools and meeting two neighbors at the apartment complex where he lives.

"We are struggling with the economy like everyone else. We are in debt, but it wasn't our money," Harris said of his pursuit of the bond's owner.

He first called the Treasury Department, where he was placed on hold longer than he could remember.

Department officials eventually told him it would take time to find the bond's purchaser and that recent bank closures made that even more difficult.

Between classes at Sierra College and before and after work at an Internet company in Gold River, the 25-year-old persisted.

He found the national bank chain involved in the bond's purchase. He spent hours on the phone with their branch employees in New Jersey and Texas, but to no avail.

He called his relatives, hoping the bond was a belated wedding gift – Nov. 4 was his first wedding anniversary.

He recalled that he and his wife had helped with a family friend's funeral arrangements. "Was this some kind of thank-you?" he asked himself.

Then Treasury Department officials called back, and he provided the bond's serial number to them.

They told him that the bond, addressed to "Jerreht Harris," was legitimate and probably was intended for him and his wife, Jennelle.

"They said it was a typo and said they could send me forms that I could use to cash it," Zack Harris said.

That's when he checked with a friend who is a lawyer.

"He said, 'Dude, if the Treasury Department is telling you it is yours, then keep it.' "

By the end of the week, Harris said he was so obsessed with his search, his co-workers noticed.

"Someone said, 'Why don't you Google Jerreht Harris' name?' " Zack Harris said.

"The first thing that came up was a Bee story about this eighth-grader winning a poster contest. Everyone was gathered around my desk, and we all read it, scrolling line by line," he said.

"Then there at the very bottom of the story ... it said the winners won a $1,000 savings bond," Harris said.

The story told how Jerreht was to receive the prize from a contest last spring with 8,300 middle and high school student entries.

"I couldn't take the eighth-grader's money," Harris said.

After trying to reach the reporter, who had retired, Harris called Warren T. Eich Intermediate School, where the story said Jerreht Harris was a student.

But Jerreht had transferred to another school. After telling a school official what he had been doing all week, Zack Harris was referred to Oakmont High School, where he told his savings bond story for the 20th time.

Harris gave his phone number to the vice principal, who contacted Jerreht Harris' mother, Cheryl Harris, who called back Monday night.

"She asked where I lived, I said Roseville. She asked what street? Then, she said, 'Oh my gosh. I live on the same street,' " Zack Harris said.

As it turned out, Jerreht Harris and Zack Harris live in the same apartment complex, and the postal carrier had mistakenly placed the savings bond envelope, addressed without an apartment number, in Zack Harris' mailbox.

"I felt so humble that he had gone through so much trouble," said Cheryl Harris, an administrative assistant to the dean of student services at Sierra College.

"He hit so many roadblocks. Most people would have given up," the mother said.

Jerreht Harris is appreciative because now he gets to try out a career dream.

"I'm thinking of spending the money on filming equipment to make a movie with my friends," said Harris, now a ninth-grader.

Treasury Department officials couldn't be reached for comment this past week, but according to the department's Web site, forms are available to fix typographical errors.

But Zack Harris said he couldn't cash the bond.

"It wasn't my money. The pieces of the puzzle didn't fit," Harris said.

Call The Bee's Ramon Coronado, (916) 773-6866.