The man from the Social Security Office of the Inspector General held up the second envelope, the one from a bank in Phoenix, for an account opened in my name that I had never seen, with Tammys signature on it. And then he told the whole anniversary party what Tammy had been hiding in it.
Tammy had not just stolen my monthly checks, she had used my name and my good credit to take a reverse mortgage on my little house on Pima Street, the house I paid off by myself, and she had been hiding the money in a secret account.
Three hundred and eighty-one soup lids. That is what my granddaughter Mia found under my bed at Christmas, every one dated in my handwriting, peeled off with my sewing shears and saved in a shoebox. She asked me what they were, and I finally told her. One can of chicken noodle for lunch, one for dinner, every day, while my checks paid for Cozumel and Alaska and the Bahamas and a tennis bracelet.
A representative payee has to spend your money on you. Food, housing, medicine. And once a year they sign a report swearing they did. My son Doug signed it, and he wrote that he spent my money on groceries and personal care. Mia called Social Security the day after Christmas, and they pulled the bank records, and three cruises and a bracelet do not look much like groceries.
I am Beverly. I am seventy-eight. I sewed wedding dresses in Tucson for forty-four years and paid off my little house on Pima Street by myself. After my hip surgery my son Doug moved me into their spare room, just till youre steady, Mom, and signed some papers making himself my payee, said it was easier that way. After that my checks went to him, and lunch was a can of soup, and when I asked for forty dollars for reading glasses, Tammy laughed and said moneys tight, Bev, while wearing a new tennis bracelet.
I did not argue. I just washed out every empty can, wrote the date on the lid, and put it in a shoebox, and I never told anybody why. I think part of me knew that someday somebody would need to see how many days of soup there really were.
Stealing a payees money is a federal crime, which is why it was not a county officer at that party but an agent from the Inspector Generals office. And identity theft on top of it, opening a bank account and taking a reverse mortgage in my name, is a second crime stacked on the first. Tammy grabbed Dougs arm and said, tell him it was a loan. But a loan does not have your forged mother-in-laws reverse mortgage hidden in a secret account.
Here is what the Phoenix account was really for. Tammy had figured out that my Pima Street house, paid off and sitting empty while I ate soup in her spare room, was worth real money. So she used my identity to take a reverse mortgage against it, tens of thousands of dollars, and funneled it into an account only she could touch, on top of my Social Security checks. She was draining the house I built my whole life, right out from under me, while telling me money was tight.
A reverse mortgage taken out by forging the homeowners identity is void. Because I never signed it and could prove it, the lien came off my house, and I did not lose Pima Street. The money Tammy hid was traced and frozen.
Doug and Tammy faced the law, not my anger. Payee fraud and identity theft and a forged mortgage are not family favors, and the Inspector Generals office does not treat them as such. The soup lids, three hundred and eighty-one of them, each dated, turned out to be the clearest record anyone had ever seen of a payee who spent the money on everything but the person.
I moved back into my own house on Pima Street. Mia helped me. My Social Security comes to me now, into my own account, and I bought myself reading glasses the first week, and a good one, not a loan, not a favor.
You dont need much at your age, Bev, Tammy told me. I did not need much. I needed my own checks, my own house, and my own name, and she took all three and hid them in Phoenix. A nineteen-year-old granddaughter and a shoebox of soup lids got them back. I eat what I like now. I have not opened a can of chicken noodle since.