Joan and Peter Petrasek issued a cashier's check of $847,215.57 dated April 27, 2015 to the U.S. Department of Treasury and was received early May, as per their request on their wills.
The Petraseks couple had willed their total amassed wealth, which includes their West Seattle house's sale and total cash in the savings bank, "to the government of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."
Carrie Balkema is the Seattle lawyer assigned managing the Petrasek estate.
It took three years to have the couple's estate cleared, as well as the house emptied of its furniture, their 1977 Ford Granada, along with their collection of guns and paintings appraised and sold.
Balkema lays out the bits and pieces of old paperwork discovered in various boxes in the Petraseks' residence. The papers perhaps fill a third of a file drawer.
Peter, originally of the Czech Republic, died at age 85 from heart failure on May 5, 2012. Joan passed away 13 years earlier from breast cancer at age 79.
The government certified Peter as a refugee at a U.S. airfield in Germany in 1949. His native country was already in control of the communist leaders.
The Petrasek couple met and married in Ottawa, where Peter had migrated after the war, in 1951. Afterwards they worked in Quebec before settling in Seattle.
The West Seattle-based Petraseks had no next of kin traced and unfortunately, no children.
Peter's sister died in the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, where she was a factory worker during the war. His mother was left alone in Prague. The Nazis had deported his father to a concentration camp, and confiscated all of their belongings.
Although the couple never clearly specified their reason for the donation, authorities have pointed to the immigrant roots of the couple and Peter's escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a probable cause behind the kindness. Joan was an Irish native before becoming a U.S. immigrant.
A treasury spokesperson stated their estate money would go into the general fund. The treasury does not monitor how many people have left their savings to the government in their wills, said Peter Winn, the assistant U.S. lawyer in Seattle who worked with the Treasury Department to accept the money on behalf of the government.
"It really reminds you how this country was founded by immigrants, and it's pretty obvious these folks felt pretty proud they were U.S. citizens," Winn stated.
The Petraseks' estate would have accounted for just a fraction of the $3.5 trillion U.S. budget spending last year.
