Pasco woman goes to doctor to show Social Security she is alive

PASCO, Wash. — No one knows how the Social Security Administration decided Doris Pennington was dead, but she has spent the past week, including a visit to the doctor, trying to convince the agency she is very much alive.

Pennington, 76, a retired schoolteacher in this Eastern Washington city, learned of the flub when a granddaughter went to the bank on Dec. 10 to cash a check from her.

"They told her her grandma was no longer banking with that bank," Pennington told the Tri-City Herald, "and she said, 'What? My grandma has always banked here."'

As the granddaughter listened, a bank official telephoned Pennington and told her that Social Security had declared her dead on Nov. 22.

A block had been placed on her checking account and the bank returned her Social Security check.

Calling the federal agency, she spent about an hour on hold and then got someone who asked if her husband had recently died.

"I said, 'No, he hasn't. He's very much alive. Have you got him down as being deceased, too?"' Pennington recalled. "She said, 'I can't give you that information."'

The woman suggested a doctor's note might help, Pennington said, so off she went to her physician's office.

"He just wrote out a thing on a prescription pad saying that he had seen me and examined me and I was alive and well," she said.

Pennington also visited the Social Security office in nearby Kennewick, presented her driver's license and Social Security card and was told an effort would be made to reinstate her, but she won't know whether that has happened before early January.

The source of the foul-up remains a mystery.

"They just told me they don't know," she said. "They said it happens more often than you think — not a daily occurrence, but it does happen."

Ryan Daviduke, a Social Security spokesman in Seattle, said such mistakes can happen in various ways, including the receipt of erroneous information from a county or funeral home or the entry of a wrong number. Beneficiaries who are mistakenly cut off are entitled to be reimbursed for any missed payments, he added.

Pennington, however, didn't think such a blunder was possible.

"It really was a hassle, and I was really frustrated about having to go through all that," Pennington said. "I couldn't help but think, what if this had happened to my 97-year-old mother?"

— — —

Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com