More than $1 million in refund checks mailed by the University of Wisconsin previously believed to be lost in the mail could have reached recipients, Bursar Cathie Easter said Thursday.

The checks, dated Aug. 28 and mailed Aug. 29, averaged about $2,500 and should have been received by hundreds of students shortly after the Labor Day holiday.

But many of the checks were not received, and the Bursar’s Office began receiving inquires about missing checks early last week.

Students were given the option late last week to make stop payment requests to have new checks issued.

Calls complaining about missing checks had mostly stopped by Thursday, Easter said, and the office received several calls from students and parents saying the checks finally came.

Multiple students who requested a stop payment called the Bursar’s Office saying they had received their original checks, but Easter said most of those students would have to wait for a new check.

“Depending on how far along we were, we were able to cancel the stop payments on a few of the students,” Easter said. “But most of them we were efficient in getting them processed. We had people staying late each night.”

There were 319 stop payment requests made, and all of the new checks were already mailed out by today, Easter said.

United States Postal Service spokesperson Marge Oehlke said the post office has yet to discover exactly where the checks went.

“We really don’t have any additional information,” Oehlke said. “We’ve got numerous employees and resources trying to determine what could have happened.”

The Bursar’s Office is working with USPS to help them discover where the checks may have disappeared for nearly three weeks.