FEATURED JOBS
When I first walked into the vestibule at Weinberg Village in Owings Mills last week, I spotted Rae Rossen sitting alone in the lobby, waiting for me, and thought to myself, “That can’t be her. She certainly doesn’t look dead.”
Then, I shook Rae’s warm hand and said, “You look great, Rae, considering …” That’s just my morbid sense of humor, but Rae actually thought I was referring to the fact that she looks far younger than her 81 years. “Oh, thank you,” she said, seemingly a little embarrassed and rubbing the smooth skin on her face, “I get it from my mother, alav hasholom.”
As Monica Lopossay, the photographer for my cover story this week on Rae, said to me, “If there is anyone in this world who is absolutely not dead and full of life, it’s Rae Rossen.”
Monica’s right. I wish I had as much energy and joie de vivre as this lady. When Rae’s not cracking jokes or telling amazing anecdotes about her life (such as working at Baltimore Hebrew College for the one-and-only Dr. Louis L. Kaplan), she’s sharing family stories or happenings (such as her granddaughter sneaking into a photo recently with President Obama – shhh, don’t tell the Secret Service).
There are sad things, too, like losing her beloved husband, Harry, in 2007 and her battle with breast cancer in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. And of course, like any octogenarian, she has her aches and pains.
But Rae – who with Harry and local bon vivant Jeffrey Amdur used to run a society for the preservation of Millard Fillmore’s legacy, and raised money for good causes with their quirky homage to the 13th president – has a way of looking at life upside down and sideways, and always coming up smiling.
It must be the result of growing up during the Great Depression in East Baltimore. That’s a generation that knew how to get through just about anything.
Nonetheless, the Social Security Administration, in its infinite wisdom, last August informed the unsinkable Miss R that she was dead and gone. No more monthly SSA benefits. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her Medicare, prescription plan benefits, and credit and debit cards were nullified and terminated. Ciao!
It was all the result of a “key error.” In other words, someone at Social Security typed in the wrong number for someone who had recently died and Rae’s SSA number came up.
The worst part of it, however, was the brick wall that Rae constantly ran into for well over two months when trying to rectify the situation with Social Security, just to let ‘em know that she was still among the living and kicking. Agent after agent – that is, when she could actually get an agent after enduring countless telephone answering systems – merely placated her, telling her to be patient, and coming off as quite indifferent and even irked. Or they gave her runarounds, telling her to call other offices and departments.
It all reminded me of that old “M*A*S*H” episode (why do I always wind up referencing old sitcoms or Springsteen songs?) when Hawkeye is informed by the Army that he is deceased. He tries and tries to work through the military’s pretzel logic and red-tape labyrinth, and at one point even gives up and decides to take advantage of the situation and go home. (Of course, noble creature that he is, he stays with the 4077th because he knows he has to be there for the wounded troops. Me? I’d be headed for the Greek Isles.)
But there was nowhere for Rae to run, nowhere to turn. She was stuck in a governmental Bermuda Triangle and could do nothing other than keep soldiering on, although she admits that there were times when she thought the bureaucratic screw-up might outlive her (or even knock her off, with all the stress). I can’t imagine all the anxiety she endured, all those days of calling the SSA in sheer exercises of futility, getting to the point where all she could do was laugh about it so she wouldn’t cry.
At one point, because of all the frustration, she didn’t even want to leave her apartment and shirked her beloved volunteering chores for a couple of days.
Who needs that kind of stress at 81 – or at any age?!
Natch, the politicians were useless. She approached the offices of the governor and a congressman, but didn’t get too far. She tried filing an official complaint with the SSA, but never heard from them (well, until this week, but more about that in a moment).
After I met with Rae for a couple of hours and heard all that she’d gone through, I called the SSA media relations troubleshooter in Philly, to discuss the whole sordid mess. Please believe me, I’m not out to pat myself on the back. There are enough journalists out there who do that sort of thing quite well. Insecure tribe that we are, we’re pretty good at wrapping ourselves in the banner of self-congratulations.
But an hour after my inquiry, Rae told me she received a call from an SSA representative, apologizing – yes, apologizing—and saying the matter was all straightened out. Oh, and a check was in the mail, to compensate for all of Rae’s benefits that were withheld.
That’s all great, but what if Rae hadn’t just sold her house in Randallstown last year? She admits that she never would’ve been able to pay her rent during this period and probably would be bunking with her son.
You’ve got to wonder, when talking to this sweet, gentle older lady with a fine, almost childlike sense of humor and nary a curmudgeonly bone in her body, didn’t any of these SSA agents ever think to themselves, “Wow, this could have been my mom or grandma going through this?” Don’t they care at all? Has empathy completely vanished from American life? Are we all that immune to each other’s problems? Have we stopped caring completely?
These are government bureaucrats. They work for us and are handling our money. And yet they treat us like they’re doing us a favor by merely talking to us on a telephone, much less helping us with our problems (some of which are caused by them, by the way).
Why did it take a quick call from a dorky reporter to get the ball rolling? I’m glad I was able to help Rae, it’s very gratifying, but you’ve got to wonder why it took me only a few minutes to do what Rae was attempting to take care of for more than two months. After all, she’s their constituent on this matter, not me.
Rae, however, wasn’t surprised. After all, she’s seen a lot in her lifetime. “Boy do they jump if they think their reputation is going to be marred,” she said to me.
The scary thing is that there are other Rae Rossens out there. And I strongly suspect there will be more, especially with Social Security’s murky future.
The bottom line is, we all deserve better.
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