San Diego Dr. Garcia Unrecovered Gold — Duval County

Dr. Hilario Garcia, primary physician in San Diego in 1929, stored wealth as gold coins in a crawl space beneath a trap door under his kitchen. He told his daughter Gloria the coins were for her special-needs brother; after his death with dementia, searchers initially found nothing. Nearly fifty years later a plumber repairing a leak discovered about 500 gold coins in the muddy crawl space. A Duval County jury awarded the coins to Gloria Lopez; she donated them to the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg. Family lore before the discovery held that additional coins might remain hidden or that the doctor had moved the hoard. Coordinates mark San Diego in Duval County, twenty-four miles southeast of Freer.