94-year-old retired LAUSD teacher wrongly declared dead, losing pension payments

Gloria Wilson is not dead, even if her California pension plan thinks so.

For decades, Wilson dedicated his life to teaching students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Now 94 and living in Texas, she relied on her CalSTRS pension, until it suddenly stopped coming.

“It was scary. I was upset,” Wilson said, adding that she first noticed something was wrong when her monthly pension deposit never showed up in her bank account.

His daughter, Melva Williams, says the family quickly understood why.

“We received a letter stating the termination of benefits due to his death,” Williams said.

“I was really upset. It bothered me and I couldn’t imagine someone saying I was dead when I wasn’t,” Wilson said.

The letter left her stunned and immediately caused financial stress.

“It was terrible because part of my monthly bills are taken out of my check because it goes directly to my bank, and so I was really upset because you wouldn’t want anything to be turned off,” Wilson said.

Williams says she called the pension plan and had to prove her mother was still alive. They were asked to send a letter signed by Wilson and his treating doctor. The family says they sent it twice.

“The mother signed where she was supposed to, the doctor signed where she was supposed to, but he needed one of their names printed and he wanted it printed where the other one should have,” Williams said.

Williams says it wasn’t until a phone call a few days ago that they received an explanation. She says she was told it didn’t just happen to her mother.

“According to him, all the retirees who had moved out of state and didn’t have a California prefix … were having problems because of the new computer system that they had put in place in October, I think,” Williams said. “The bottom line is, just like my mom, they’ve been declared dead or ineligible now or something. And I’m like, what? A computer glitch?”

In a statement, California State Teachers Retirement System spokesperson Thomas Lawrence told ABC7 this was not related to a system error or glitch and said:

“We regularly review benefit payments for security reasons and to prevent fraud, and we are not aware of any benefit payments that have been improperly stopped. If a member ever sees a delayed payment, we work as quickly as possible to reissue the payment.”

The family says they are still waiting for the missing payments and hope sharing their story will help other retirees check their accounts, especially those who moved from California.

Wilson says that in his 40 years of teaching – and several decades of retirement – ​​this has never happened before.

“I just couldn’t get comfortable and I was really upset about what was happening because I never had a problem with my check arriving,” Wilson said.

There is good news. CalSTRS sent ABC7 an email Friday evening saying it had resolved the situation with Gloria and payments would resume early next week. Her daughter says she will see if that happens and let us know.