Real Life Sitcom For (Not) Dead Woman, Utah Man

Years ago the award-winning classic television show M*A*S*H featured an episode about leading man Hawkeye Pierce.

In the show, the US Army inadvertently classified Pierce as being deceased, even going so far as to notify his family of his unfortunate passing.

Fortunately, Hawkeye wasn't dead, but it took him awhile to convince his family and friends that he was, indeed alive.

And in a case of life imitating art, a woman from Southern California was shocked to find out she was dead.

That's what the Social Security Administration thought, anyway.

And poor Barbara Smith of Costa Mesa (who is very much alive) has been trying to correct the error since the agency stopped sending her monthly benefit checks in September, when she supposedly died in Boise.

The mistake led to the 81-year-old's bank account being frozen. Ultimately, she spent hours on the phone with a Social Security representative who eventually asked her to take a photo of herself holding her driver's license and a piece of paper stating she was alive ("Oh, so you're not dead? Well, prove it!"

The agency says one-third of one percent of the reported deaths each year get recorded incorrectly.

That works out to about 10,000 people a year, possibly going through what Barbara Smith just did.

At least they didn't notify her next-of-kin.

In Southern Utah, this happened a few years ago when local man began to wonder why he stopped receiving Social Security checks.

"I called them and they didn't believe it was me," he told a local media outlet. "I'm 77-years-old and have never had to try and convince someone that I was still alive until now. I said, 'What do I have to do, come down there and do a jig?'"