The father of a young Sparks boy died earlier this year. However, a mistake in paperwork at the Reno Social Security office ended up marking the boy as deceased instead of his father.
“They had terminated Sam instead of Mike," said Elizabeth McCollum, mother of 7-year-old Samuel Parker.
However, there's one major problem. Parker is alive, and just fine. He confirmed this with us.
“So you have a lot of energy,” I asked.
“I, like, have 1,000 energy stuff,” said Parker.
In February, Sam's father, Michael died unexpectedly. When McCollum tried to collect Sam's survivor benefits, she discovered the problem.
“They marked him as deceased," said McCollum.
This issue is more common than you think. A 2011 CNN Money report discovered that 14,000 people are marked dead in error, just like Sam, every year. That causes problems when a person applies for a job, a driver's license, or for anything you need your Social Security card.
For Elizabeth, she had to sign a written affidavit and take Sam to the office in person to prove his existence.
The affidavit reads: "Samuel Parker is alive and well and going to school at Katherine Dunn Elementary School in Reno, Nevada."
In April, Sam was ‘brought back from the dead,' as the office officially recognized Sam's existence.
We asked the Social Security Administration for comment. They cannot speak directly to individual cases, but did provide us with this statement:
“When Social Security receives a report that a beneficiary reported as deceased is still alive, we take immediate steps to determine whether the report is accurate and restore payments. We also try to determine how the erroneous death termination occurred.
Social Security receives reports of death from various sources, including family members, funeral homes, financial institutions, and States. An erroneous death termination is rare and usually occurs when we receive:
• an incorrect report,
• a death match with another agency that has received an incorrect report, or
• an erroneous return by the financial institution with a reason code of death.”
But the problems have not been completely resolved.
McCollum was able to collect the first survivor benefits in February before the error occurred. However, she is still unable to collect the remaining benefits because the office says McCollum was over paid. That issue has not been resolved at the time of this writing.
