An 80-year-old woman named Wanda Ritter has a touching story to share with the world, and it has a happy ending.
It’s been 16 years since Wanda last slept in her own bed at home. Many thought she was crazy because she kept saying that “the government owes her $100,000.” She repeated it every day. She carried a suitcase filled with papers and unpaid checks, but no one paid attention. People assumed she was just another person with mental health issues.
Wanda used to work as a locksmith and was a mother to four children. On the streets of Washington, she kept insisting that the Social Security System owed her a lot of money. “I thought about getting rid of my documents,” she said. “I told myself that if I did something foolish, people would think I was insane.”
But everything changed when Julie Turner, a 56-year-old social worker, heard her story and became interested in her case. When she looked at the papers, she couldn’t believe it.
Wanda needed financial help, not mental health support. Turner pointed out that the government actually owed her $100,000. However, how did Wanda understand the problem?
Wanda started receiving checks ranging from $300 to $900 every month. She didn’t cash these checks because she believed there was something wrong with them. Instead, she returned them. However, Ritter called Social Security Services to investigate the issue.
“If I had cashed them and claimed there was a mistake, who would have believed me?” Ritter told local reporters. She believes that once she gets her case sorted out, she can resolve it. With the help of the kind worker Julie Turner, Ritter found a $500 apartment. A week after the news became widely known, Ritter received her first $1,644 check from Social Security.