Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993 TAG: 9303310042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last week, she found an official-looking letter waiting for her, and quickly tore it open.
It came from the city of Lynchburg.
It reminded Tracy that she still owes $462 in delinquent water bills and that $33.41 would be swiped from her tax refund to start paying the balance.
The water was heisted in 1988 from two Lynchburg residences - one on Jackson Street and another on Rivermont Avenue.
Lynchburg, like many Virginia municipalities, is part of a statewide collection system that pools information about deadbeats.
Parking tickets, taxes, water bills - they all can be traced through the state's Big Brother mainframe. The fun of trying to skirt the rules has taken another blow.
Just in the past year, Lynchburg's water records have come under scrutiny of the collection agency.
Tracy Overstreet's name came up twice.
State records showed that Tracy Overstreet got married and was now Tracy Spangler, and they showed a Social Security number and a tax return. Lynchburg fired off the letter to Tracy.
This would be a rather neat and efficient use of government time and ingenuity, save for two small details.
Forget for a moment that Tracy Overstreet or any other person would have been hard-pressed to use $462 worth of water even if she had an obsessive compulsive disorder that prompted her to water polo fields on the half-hour.
Tracy Overstreet was 16 years old when the Lynchburg water supposedly was drawn and not paid for. She lived in Roanoke with her family and was a student at Jackson Middle School.
And, equally curious: "I've never even been to Lynchburg, except for the day I went there to clean this mess up!" said Tracy Overstreet Spangler.
She did that last week.
She signed a piece of paper in front of Lynchburg water sleuths, and they held it up next to the 1988 version of Tracy Overstreet's signature and the two obviously were totally different.
"Somebody used my name," said Tracy.
If her name were Zoosanix Fedrorodrigovanicz, she might have a case. But there are 52 Overstreets in the Lynchburg phone directory, so we may not be dealing here with a hygiene-crazy sociopath who was trying to be an impostor, too.
We're dealing with one of those bureaucratic foul-ups that are so frustrating for their victims (Tracy Overstreet Spangler) and so much fun for the rest of us to use as ammo when lampooning our government inaction.
"We try to research them as best we can," says Judy Hall, who's worked on the Overstreet-Spangler water case for Lynchburg's Water Department. "She just shared a name."
Tracy is being told to be patient. Her $33.41 tax refund will get here sooner or later.
Maybe. If it doesn't go to Tracy Overstreet in Portsmouth. Or Tracy Spangler in Big Stone Gap.
by CNB