By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer
The Feds said Lorraine Keeley was dead, her car was stolen and her checks and cards were canceled

RUMFORD – Lorraine Keeley doesn’t believe in voodoo, but, after the past four hellish months, she thinks that someone somewhere hexed her.

In March, the Social Security Administration declared the 56-year-old Rumford leg-amputee dead. Things snowballed from there.

Her disability checks and credit cards were canceled, her mortgage became endangered, dual accounts with her husband were jeopardized, creditors began calling, and one day, her new prosthetic leg’s foot fell off.

Additionally, while visiting family in Delaware, her 2005 Jeep Liberty was stolen, along with her 9-year-old prosthetic leg made for long-distance driving. Police in Maryland recovered the stripped and fire-gutted SUV two days later, but the artificial leg is still missing.

“This is not identity theft. This is the system screwing up,” an exasperated Keeley said recently at her part-time secretarial job with the River Valley Technology Center in Rumford.

“It’s a wonder I’m not in a loony bin somewhere,” she added.

Topping the Keeley “Despair Chart” this month, the letter she got from Social Security that proves she’s alive, isn’t acceptable to credit bureaus. Whoever typed it up, misspelled Administration.

“All I’ve been doing for months is faxing people this letter that says I’m alive. I’m here physically, but according to everything else, I’m not here. I’m the walking dead. Please! Somebody resurrect me!” she said.

Enter Karen Staples, a caseworker for U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe in Auburn. After learning of Keeley’s plight last month, Staples waded into the mess, plucking Keeley from the bureaucratic quicksand.

She also expedited the administration’s erroneous death process, restoring Keeley’s monthly disability payments. Now, it’s just a matter of getting everything else straightened out.

Staples deferred comment to Snowe spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier in Washington, D.C. Ferrier, contacted Friday afternoon, said what happened to Keeley is “just unbelievable.”

She said Keeley did the right thing, seeking Snowe’s help.

Hints of trouble

On the evening of May 8, the day before her five-day Delaware vacation started, Keeley’s attempt to buy groceries for her husband revealed the impending fiasco.

Attempts to pay for the food electronically were denied. Her bank account, into which her disability checks are automatically deposited, was empty.

The next day, she called Social Security.

“Mrs. Keeley, we have you deceased as of March 16,” the administration worker said.

Stunned, she was sent to the Social Security office in Rumford, given a caseworker – who subsequently left on vacation, further complicating matters – and had to drive to Auburn to get an emergency payment before heading to her mother’s home in Magnolia, Del.

Keeley’s right leg was amputated in 1996 after a blood clot in her thigh went undetected since the 1980s, Keeley said. Fitted with an artificial leg, she limps slightly and walks with a cane.

While she was out of state, her credit cards were canceled, and Social Security demanded her April disability payment back. To return to Maine, she rented a car that ended up costing $600 cash, because she couldn’t buy a used one to get to and from work – credit bureau records said she was dead.

“Word gets around. It’s like the plague. I couldn’t buy a car until I got a letter stating that I’m alive. I cried to American Express, but they wanted a letter saying, You’re back in the system, Mrs. Keeley,’ and, until I get that letter, I was told I’ve got to wait,” Keeley said.

“What’s funny is that I’m on disability and I work part-time, so I have to take my check to Social Security, and I’ve been doing that in March, April, May and June, so, they knew I’m not deceased,” she said.

Next, a Social Security worker told her it would take two to three months to “revive” her in the system.

“Unacceptable!” Keeley said.

Keeley was “killed off” by a data-entry error made at the Rumford office, she said. She was told to go to the administration payment center in Auburn to get emergency payments.

“I’m not running down to Auburn every month to get my paycheck, because some knucklehead depressed the wrong button. One stroke of a number or name and you’re out? And it takes months to get back in? That’s crazy!” she said.

A Rumford Social Security office employee deferred comment Thursday to public affairs spokesman Robert Clark at the administration’s Portland office.

Clark said he could not comment on individual cases due to the Privacy Act, nor could he confirm how the error was made.

However, both he and Ferrier said what happened to Keeley was a fluke.

“It’s extremely rare, but it does occur, and we have procedures in place to help individuals when it does,” Clark said.

It just takes time.

“After a while, it’s like OK, it’s the waiting game,” Keeley said.

“But when my foot fell off, I just cried and sat in my car for four hours. Unacceptable,” she added.