THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 2, 1994 TAG: 9408020306
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
Ever since the state lost their child-support payments, how well Jeffrey, David and Bobby eat depends on how well they pull crabs and croaker from the Chesapeake Bay.
For a decade, their mother, Kimberly O. Tompulis, figured the father of her two oldest boys was ignoring them. She hardly heard from him and received little or no financial support.
But in late May, Jeffrey and David's grandmother sent a letter. Things must be easier with those support checks coming in from her son, she wrote.
Tompulis started: What support checks?
Eventually she found out that the father has been sending child-support payments for a year. His paychecks were being garnisheed in Illinois, and the money sent to Virginia's Division of Child Support Enforcement. Virginia officials never told Tompulis about the payments - and then sent them back to the father after she didn't claim them.
It wasn't the first time that a state computer or bookkeeping snafu - one of many problems in the overburdened, largely ineffective system - has kept Virginia children from receiving money paid on their behalf. Across the state, only half the estimated 350,000 child-support cases have obtained legal orders for payments by absent parents. Only a fourth receive any payments at all.
Tompulis lived with Jeffrey and David's father for eight years but never married him. She has received little support in the decade since she left him, but she has kept in touch with his parents. She later married and separated from the father of her third son, Bobby.
Tompulis, 37, sometimes worked multiple jobs - waitress, nursing assistant - to help support her family. The last time was in the spring, but she had to quit as a waitress and short-order cook because she couldn't find a suitable sitter for her boys. David, 11, was hospitalized for two years with emotional disorders and still requires special care; Bobby, 8, was born with one arm. They and Jeffrey, 12, are in therapy.
The family made do with Navy support
checks from her estranged husband, disability payments for David's care and food stamps. They've lived since last year in a weatherbeaten house yards from the Bay.
Masking tape covers two long cracks in the front door, and photos of the boys cover the walls.
Their mother sleeps on a living-room couch that has a spring sticking out the bottom. They were getting by.
But things got worse when another bureaucratic foul-up temporarily stopped the Navy checks. The family ran out of money.
While Tompulis fruitlessly sought answers, her boys were waking to breakfasts of one scrambled egg apiece washed down with tap water.
And in the evenings they often fished for their supper. Their landlord's patience was waning; he already had given them a five-day notice, although he held off evicting them.
``It's the 8-year-old's birthday today,'' Tompulis said last month. ``Who's going to tell him there's no birthday cake?
``All I know is, it's desperate now. I'm desperate.''
She called Virginia child-support officials four and five times a day from a neighbor's phone. Usually she couldn't reach anyone, and few of her calls were returned, she said. But slowly she found out things.
Her case had been declared inactive years earlier. The payments from Illinois couldn't be found.
Viola D. Prince, a case manager for the Norfolk Community Services Board's Mental Health Unit who worked with the family, tried to help, but also grew frustrated.
``I have never had a situation so complicated where the money was there and she can't get it,'' Prince said. ``I got information from the state of Illinois in two or three hours, and Virginia said it couldn't get it.''
An Illinois Division of Child Support Enforcement spokesman said Jeffrey and David's father has been sending $130 to Virginia authorities every two weeks since July 1993 - a total of more than $3,000.
By early July, a Virginia DCSE caseworker said they had located some of the money in a holding account in Richmond. ``All I have to do is push a button, and within 48 hours you'll be issued a check,'' Tompulis said the caseworker told her.
The family celebrated. They enjoyed a rare dinner out. They raced through Roses, splurging on long-postponed new clothes, shoes, even Mighty Morphin Power Rangers toys. ``We blew a lot of money,'' Tompulis said.
But no check came. The caseworker was on vacation. When he returned, he said the money wasn't there anymore. Illinois didn't have it, either.
The family missed its July rent payment. The Community Services Board helped them find some money for groceries, but crabbing and fishing took on added urgency.
``We eat a lot of crabs,'' Tompulis said, smiling wanly.
A DCSE official called Tompulis in mid-July, the same day a newspaper reporter called the agency inquiring about Tompulis' case. The official criticized her for taking her case to the news media, Tompulis said, but also sent her a check for $130. The money went for groceries and a few birthday hats for Bobby's postponed party.
Officials promised more, but nothing came for days, until last week. To tide the family over, the state sent a check for $520 via Federal Express from a state emergency fund.
The money will be deducted from the money Tompulis' children are owed.
Elizabeth T. Ray, district manager for the Norfolk DCSE office, said Tompulis apparently didn't return a postcard sent to her when her file was purged in December 1992 for being inactive.
Under the old computer system used before this year, there was no cross-index to let workers know she was also getting support payments from a different father at her current address.
The money from Illinois went into an unclaimed account for almost a year, and in mid-May was returned to the father. Tompulis learned about the payments and began asking for them 11 days later.
``I can't say definitely what happened,'' the DCSE's Ray said last week.
``I guess I would have to say she did not always let us know when she had a new address. Yes, we had pieces of mail come back . . . but it didn't mean all cases were updated.''
Tompulis is still waiting for more checks. Ray promised that the DCSE will go after the money it returned to the father in Illinois, and will seek his bank accounts if he has any.
``I have no doubt she's in desperate need,'' Ray said.
Tompulis said she'll believe everyone when she sees the checks. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JIM WALKER/Staff
Kimberly O. Tompulis, 37, fishes in the Chesapeake Bay with sons
Bobby, 8, in foreground, Jeffrey, 12, rear left, and David, 10.
Since a tangled bureaucracy stopped the family's support checks, the
family has harvested its suppers from the water.
KEYWORDS: CHILD SUPPORT by CNB