Some local Riverside investors experienced huge losses TCPalm
FORT PIERCE — As they planned the formation of Riverside National Bank, Vernon D. Smith and other bank founders used to meet at Elaine Kovach’s Surf Restaurant on North Hutchinson Island.
“When they asked if I’d like to invest in the bank,” said Kovach, now 73 and retired in the Meadowood neighborhood of Fort Pierce, “how could I refuse?”
Kovach bought 2,000 shares of stock at $10 a share using “all the money I could spare.”
J Gaines, a certified public accountant in Fort Pierce, was just getting his business started when he bought what he called “a little bit” of stock, also at $10 a share at the initial offering in 1982.
“I thought it would be good to get involved in a local company,” Gaines said. “It also turned out to be a good investment for a good while.”
Kovach and Gaines are among hundreds of Treasure Coast residents who saw their investments in Riverside soar for the next 25 years, only to lose everything when the bank crashed and burned April 16. That’s the day it was taken over by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and sold by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to the international TD Bank.
