A homeless woman on the streets of Astoria, Oregon, died last year having never collected a penny of the nearly $900,000 fortune she inherited when her mother passed away in 2016.
Cathy Boone, 49, was the sole heir to $884,407, but she died broke in January 2020 after emails, Facebook messages, newspaper advertisements and a private investigator failed to track her whereabouts.
To this day, it remains unclear whether the money has been claimed by any rightful heirs.
The state has distributed the funds to the personal representative for Boone’s estate, who is responsible for locating Boone’s children, according to reports.
Probate court documents show that Boone was aware of the inheritance, but it’s unclear why she never claimed it.
She was the original personal representative for the estate, but after her attorney lost touch with her, a new personal representative was appointed who was unable to locate her, according to Liane O’Neill, a communications officer with the Oregon Department of State Lands, the agency that first held Boone’s inheritance but transferred the money to the woman’s estate in 2019 after she couldn’t be found.
“It just didn’t make any sense to me,” said Boone’s estranged father, Jack Spithill, who lives in Texas. “That money was just sitting there, and she needed help in the worst way.”
“She was a special person as far as I'm concerned. She was a sweetheart ... I fell in love with her."
Boone grew up in the Portland area and reportedly struggled most of her adult life with drug abuse and mental health issues that ultimately spiraled into homelessness.
She had been a volunteer at the nonprofit Sisters of The Road Café in downtown Portland for several years before moving to the coastal town of Astoria to be closer to her mother, Patricia Lupton, according to The Oregonian. After Lupton died in 2016, family said Boone relapsed into drug abuse and ultimately faded into obscurity.
Meanwhile, Boone was needlessly struggling as a regular at the Astoria Warming Shelter, unaware of the fortune left to her.
Those who befriended the woman during the final years of her life had no idea she was an heiress, but described her as a happy person with “more smiles than cries.”
“She was a special person as far as I’m concerned,” said Donny Holder, who used to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee with Boone at a local McDonald’s, according to The Oregonian. “She was a sweetheart ... I fell in love with her.”
An attorney and personal representative assigned to her mother’s estate tried to find Boone to no avail, according to reports.
In 2019, a Clatsop County judge ordered the money be turned over to the state, and the following year, on Jan. 13, Boone died after being rushed to St. Vincent’s hospital in Portland for breathing complications, The Oregonian reported.
Boone could have easily gotten the money if she had simply come forward to claim it, officials said.
“Given a year and a half of effort taken by the personal representative and the attorney for this particular estate, there really isn’t much more that the state could do,” said Claudia Ciobanu, unclaimed property manager with Oregon State Lands. “This is a unique case, and we sympathize with the family.”
Boone had two children that officials are now working to find in case they might have some claim to the inheritance.
Spithill, who separated from Boone’s mother when Boone was young, expressed remorse for losing touch with his daughter over the years. “I kind of gave up on her because of the drugs and shouldn’t have done that.”
About the Author
