Two things are absolutely, 100 percent true: Majida Assayed is alive. But the Social Security Administration killed her anyway, at least on paper.
Inside her Fountain Valley home, Assayed was quite animated.
“I’m still dead!” she shouted. “Can you believe it?”
Social Security Administration officials in Virginia, San Francisco and Fountain Valley did not return phone calls Tuesday seeking comment, but letters from the agency confirm Assayed’s account.
Turns out, Social Security afterlife is a crowded world. Every month, more than 1,200 people nationwide are incorrectly entered into a database known as the “Death Master File” according to Social Security Administration records.
In the past 14 months, Assayed has suffered the all-too real deaths of her husband and mother. That was life-changing and painful.
In the nearly six weeks that Assayed has been officially dead in the eyes of Social Security, she’s endured tax hassles and been denied a bank account. She’s also had a credit card canceled and seen her credit rating flatline.
Here’s how it happened:
On March 11, Assayed’s mother, Atifa Addam, died. A couple days later, Assayed, 46, went to the Social Security Administration’s Fountain Valley office to stop the benefit checks Addam had been receiving.
But someone at the Social Security office accidentally typed “Majida Assayed” into the computer as “deceased.”
The checks for Assayed’s mother stopped. So did Assayed’s life, at least as far as the Social Security Administration is concerned.
As of Tuesday, Assayed has been told by Social Security that they have corrected the error. Still, her life won’t be fully resurrected in their eyes until Friday at the earliest.
“I don’t believe them,” she said.
Assayed, who came to the United States from Lebanon in 1985 and became a naturalized citizen in 1991, has spent 14 years living in Fountain Valley, working as a stay-at-home mom raising three daughters.
But in March 2013, when her husband died at age 54 after a long battle with prostate cancer, she changed her life.
“I looked in his eyes, and I saw there was” an afterlife, she said.
A Muslim, she switched from wearing her long blond hair open to covering her hair regularly with a hijab. She prayed at her mosque more frequently.
That faith, Assayed says, is what prompted her to go to the Social Security office in Fountain Valley when her mother died. (Talking with Social Security after the death of a loved one also is encouraged by the agency and financial counselors, among others.)
About a month after she reported her mother’s death to Social Security, Assayed received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service addressed to her late husband: “Nabil Assayed – deceased.” The letter concerned a tax bill that Assayed says was settled in 2013, shortly after he died.
But the letter is how Assayed learned she was no longer alive.
A woman at the IRS office said the agency’s records indicated Majida Assayed had been dead since March 11. The woman, according to Assayed, giggled as she said it.
Assayed was not amused. She asked what she was supposed to do to bring herself back to life.
The IRS sent her to the Social Security office in Fountain Valley where the original mistake was made. A woman there confirmed that, yes, Assayed was dead.
“I felt like I was going to faint,” Assayed said. “I asked her, ‘Are you sure I’m dead?’
“She said, ‘Yes you are.’”
The woman assured Assayed she would fix the mistake.
The next day, Assayed went to the bank to close a joint checking account she’d shared with her husband and open her own checking account. But as a dead person she wasn’t a desirable customer.
“Our records show you’re deceased,” she was told at the bank.
Her death presented other problems, too. Her credit card was canceled. She had no credit scores. The bank told her that life would be very difficult until her death was cleared up and her credit scores restored.
So she went back to the Social Security office.
“I was crying. I told them, ‘You’re ruining my life.’”
Finally, on Friday, April 18, after several return visits to the Social Security office, Assayed was assured that everything would be back to normal. All they needed was for Assayed to confirm that she was who she said she was – a process that takes several days.
“You made me dead in the click of a button,” Assayed said. “Now, bring me back to life.”
Contact the writer: ksharon@ocregister.com
