Waconia woman crawls back from the 'dead'

Rita Johnson learned of her own death via U.S. mail Thanksgiving weekend.

The first tipoff came from her Discover credit card. Rather than a promotional offer, the company sent a letter expressing condolences over her passing.

Calls to the creditor revealed the shocking truth: Because of a clerical error, the Social Security Administration had killed her off — at least on paper.

The bureaucratic murder locked Johnson, 75, out of her own life. In an instant, her Social Security number and credit rating were erased, and her health insurance thrown into flux.

"It's a horror story," she said recently at her Waconia home, surrounded by piles of paper. "Everybody seems like they're trying to do the right thing, but it's like I'm in the Twilight Zone."

It took five weeks to resurrect her in the federal system. But Johnson's problems are far from resolved.

Premature deaths on paper of Social Security recipients are so common that they're part of the agency's frequently asked question page: "What should I do if I'm incorrectly listed as deceased in Social Security's records?"

A 2011 audit found that about 1,000 people are incorrectly marked deceased in the United States every month, wreaking all kinds of havoc when benefits cease, bank accounts close, credit card applications are denied and identity thieves muscle in.

That number has since been sliced in half, said Rona Lawson, assistant inspector general for audit at the SSA.

Of the 2.5 million deaths reported to the SSA each year, an average of 500 people per month — or 6,000 a year — erroneously made it onto the agency's Death Master File, said Lawson, citing a 2016 audit. While that's a small fraction of overall deaths, Lawson acknowledged that if you're one of those affected, it can turn your world upside down.

"It's a nightmare to fix," Lawson said, adding that there is no perfect fail-safe. "Often, the first time you find out is when your check doesn't come."

Lawson attributes many of the improvements to the electronic death registration, which catalogs vital statistics. The electronic system, partly in use in Minnesota and 46 other states, allows state workers to verify names and Social Security numbers before they're passed on to Social Security, she said.

More often than not, blunders arise with a simple input error by Social Security staff. (It's not unusual for employees to accidentally assign death information to the wrong spouse — easy to do, because they're listed under the same record if they share benefits.)

For Johnson, the saga began when a funeral home director in Texas reported a death with a Social Security number nearly identical to hers. It was handwritten and difficult to read, so she wound up as collateral damage, confirmed SSA officer Stewards Vang.

"It's easy to kill somebody, but it's not easy to bring somebody back to life," Vang said.

That type of oversight is extremely rare.

"That's more than just a silly mistake," Lawson said. "That's really careless."

'An appalling error'

When Johnson finally got around to opening the mail she'd been neglecting, an unbelievable letter stared her in the face.

Her Discover card was canceled. Corporate thought she was 6 feet under and sought to settle her account with whoever might be handling her estate. Someone was playing a joke, she thought. Surely, they couldn't believe she was actually dead.

Her daughter combed Equifax, where her credit rating remained intact, with no signs of fraud. She contacted Discover, which relayed that it automatically receives death notices regarding cardholders from Social Security.

That's when Johnson knew she was in trouble.

She grabbed her passport and identifying documents, then trudged to multiple SSA offices. At the Chicago Avenue location, Johnson demanded that officers admit their mistake. Vang informed her of the mix-up, deleted the death record and notified her bank.

But that wasn't the end of it.

For weeks, she kept receiving notices: Four creditors listed her as dead. A scheduled MRI on her hip had to be canceled because she suddenly found herself without health insurance. And — the last straw — she was removed as the representative payee for her disabled sister, Toni, who has Down syndrome and lives in a St. Cloud adult care facility.

Only a living guardian could manage Toni's Social Security payments, so her benefit checks might be delayed. When Vang said it might take time to resolve the error, she recalled telling him, "This can't happen. She has no other means of finances."

Moving forward

Johnson made frantic calls to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Erik Paulsen and state Attorney General Lori Swanson. "I'm at the end of my rope," she remembered thinking. "I need to get help."

She was finally restored to the living on Dec. 21 — nearly five weeks from the time she opened her first letter.

"Stories like Rita's are, unfortunately, becoming common, and it's outrageous she had to endure these hardships because of the federal government's incompetence. This highlights the government's antiquated approach to some of its most basic functions and the need for reforms," said Paulsen, who advocates updating the Social Security Administration's technology.

Klobuchar described the mishap as "an appalling error" and made calls to the agency.

In retrospect, Johnson said, she's one of the lucky ones. She never went hungry from a missed check or suffered a serious loss — just a major headache. But she often wonders about those who are not as capable of challenging it.

Overall, Johnson estimates that she spent 40-plus hours on the phone trying to correct it all. Nine weeks later, she was still waiting to make doctor appointments for fear of not being covered. Her credit rating? Stuck at zero.

"You can call and call and call, but you don't have control," said Johnson, who worked 25 years as a receptionist. "There's got to be a better way."

Liz Sawyer • 612-673-4648