PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. — A Prince George woman with a rare heart condition has been waiting a long time for her Social Security disability benefits.
Nearly four years.
After she contacted CBS 6 last summer, Bill Fitzgerald reached out to the local office and within a few months the SSA determined she would be getting two years' worth of disability back pay.
With a pacemaker, sleep apnea, arthritis and degenerating disks, Bobbi Perez says that early December letter was just what she had been waiting for.
Watch: Stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, Virginia woman waits on end for Social Security disability decision
When the SSA wrote she would be getting thousands of dollars Perez told her landlord, who she says had been exceedingly patient, he would get the several months of back rent she owed.
He then set an eviction deadline for Tuesday, Jan. 28.
But more than six weeks after that joyous confirmation, the Social Security disability money still has not been paid, even though some of it has already been distributed by the SSA.
Perez says she is desperate with nowhere to go.
"I'm still waiting on that back pay," said Perez. "Because I had gotten denied, I went and got a lawyer. My lawyer got paid out of my back pay, and the Social Security office has been paid [their service fee] from it. I still haven't been paid. No one told me. My lawyer didn't even tell me that they were paid. I had to find out on my own that they had been paid back in December."
Perez told me she went to the Petersburg office to find out where her disability money is and was told all she needed was for her case worker at that office to sign off on it.
But despite repeated calls and emails over the last several days that employee has not responded.
Sitting besides Perez, Fitzgerald even tried, and left a voicemail message.
Fitzgerald also reached out again to the spokesperson for Richmond's SSA office, stressing the urgency of Perez's case with her eviction just five days away but have not heard back.
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