92-year-old ‘stunned’ by report of her death, emptying of account

PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Betty Longshore, 92, was very much alive Feb. 29 when her bank telephoned her to find out if she was dead.

“They said, ‘Betty, is this you? We have a report you are deceased,’ ” the west Port Angeles resident recalled.

“They said, ‘Can you come down to the bank?’ I thought I’d go in and say, ‘Here I am, and I’m alive,’ and everyone would laugh, and that would be the end of it.”

It was anything but that.

An employee of First Federal in Port Angeles told Longshore the bank had been required by law to withdraw $16,953 in federal retirement benefits from her account and return it to the federal government, which mistakenly had believed she was dead while she was receiving the benefits.

As of Friday morning, the bulk of the funds – $13,990 in civil service retirement benefits – had been returned to her First Federal account by the federal Office of Personnel Management, she said.

“It got there overnight,” Longshore said.

The federal government already had returned $2,963 to her account Thursday, she said.

Friday’s happy ending brought Longshore, who receives about $25,000 in benefits annually, back to where she was before Feb. 29.

She admitted to being “shocked and stunned” by the events of the past several days.

Her tribulations began after the U.S. Department of the Treasury sent First Federal a notice at the end of February that said Longshore’s “date of death” was July 20, 2011, according to the notice. Within 24 hours, all her checking account funds and some of her money market funds were gone, with money returned to the government.

Longshore said First Federal called her after seeing that her account had remained active despite her supposed demise.

Longshore was very happy with First Federal: “I want to emphasize that the bank did the best they could.”