Get Publicity For Your Case, Get A Call At The Dinner Hour Telling You That Your Problem Has Been Fixed

     From the Washington Times:

Two sisters faced with repaying the federal government $100,000 after their “dead” father turned up alive — 47 years later — received some welcome news in the waning hours of 2018. 

Lynne Grensted Thurston, 61, said a Social Security Administration agent notified her Monday that her share of the bill and the share owed by her sister, 63-year-old Beth Grensted, had been forgiven. 

We were already sitting down to dinner, and she [the agent] called to say she was leaving the office, but, ‘I wanted to let you know that the decision has been made,’” Mrs. Thurston told The Washington Times. “‘It’s completely erased for you and your sister.’” ... 

In June 2016, the sisters were hit with a bombshell: Their father, Douglas Grensted, who had been declared legally dead after disappearing on a hunting trip in 1968, actually had faked his death to run off with his mistress to Arizona. He died there in December 2015. Not only that, but the SSA ordered the sisters and their mother to repay about $100,000 in survivors’ benefits. Mrs. Thurston, who was 11 when her father vanished, was billed about $12,000; her sister Beth, who was 13, owed $10,000, and their mother, Barbara Grensted, received a bill for $87,000. ...

     This family deserved the relief but so do many others who don’t get relief or only get it after a long delay.  The difference is that this family got media attention. It didn’t hurt them that the attention came from a right wing source.