JOHNSON: Stimulus check that never came stimulates small acts of kindness

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 6, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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I love chatting with Kerry Kendall. She, without question, has the sunniest disposition of anyone I have ever met. There is not a sentence she begins that isn't preceded by a gale of laughter.

This is true when she feigns anger over the storm of people who called or visited her after the last time I wrote of her.

"It has been the most-amazing period of my life," she said, still chuckling. "I've met a lot of unbelievably nice and kind people."

She laughs again.

"But would you tell people that I'm not in the poor house, at least not to that extent," the 61-year-old Denver woman said.

It has been months since I wrote of her and her dismay over not receiving her economic-stimulus payment from the federal government.

I wrote it pretty much the way she had laid it out for me, of how she had such grand plans for the $300, a princely sum for a disabled woman surviving on tiny Social Security payments.

Yes, she was going to spend $100 of it for her 16-year-old cat Elizabeth's semi-annual veterinarian checkup, as much as $70 on a new dress for church that she long had her eye on, a little for prescriptions and the rest on a shopping spree at Wal-Mart.

After multiple trips and calls to the Internal Revenue Service, a representative finally told her the check would arrive by May 9.

It never did.

And Kerry Kendall on that day called to ask if I knew of a lawyer that might help her get her payment.

Her telephone began ringing the day the column appeared.

"One man appeared at my door - he must have looked me up in the phone book - who just would not take 'no' for an answer and pressed a check for $100 in my hand.

"Another man did the same thing. The response was just unbelievable," Kerry Kendall said. "I live in a little place up on Capitol Hill, but I am not in the poorhouse.

"And no, I wasn't offended by their generosity. I don't need and didn't want to take these people's money."

I had to ask the question.

"No, I still haven't gotten it," Kerry Kendall said of her economic-stimulus check, this time exploding in a roar of laughter.

It had taken another two trips to the IRS to get a sort of understandable explanation.

The trouble is, she explained, that she had filed an amended tax return ahead of the filing deadline. Reviewing and processing the new return put her at the back of the economic stimulus line.

She is now, she says, something of an expert caller to the Internal Revenue Service. She has lost count of how many times she has called but insists she can tell early when she will get a human being or a recording. It is all about recognizing the number of recorded prompts you initially get, she says.

It takes practice, Kerry Kendall says, something she says she wishes on no one.

A week ago Friday, a check did arrive in the mail from the IRS. Kerry Kendall opened it. It was for two dollars.

"It was my original tax refund. I was $2 to the good on last year's taxes. With it was a letter saying my $300 would be mailed no later than the middle of this month."

She has trashed her old list, she said.

The money provided by strangers helped pay for Elizabeth's checkup and that dress she always wanted.

"People keep asking, so please tell everyone my cat is doing very well."

She really has no new list, Kerry Kendall said, repeating what she told me earlier, that experience long ago taught her to never contemplate spending a dollar that isn't in her pocket.

That isn't, though, to say she doesn't have definite plans for the $300 whenever it arrives.

"I'm going to put $100 of it in the checking account for safe-keeping and emergencies. That much I know.

"I saw an ad for a heart-imaging scan for $152. I'm in good shape, so that would just be a preventative measure - you know, just in case.

"The remaining $50 is coming to me, just me. There are the thrift stores - I love the thrift stores. I'm also thinking of getting a magazine subscription - probably Cat Fancy. I might even renew my subscription to the AARP."

So she waits, but not like she used to, the way she would walk briskly every day to the mailbox to see if the check had arrived.

"Three times they have told me the check is in the mail," Kerry Kendall said. "I know people have it worse than me. Still, I don't know what to believe anymore. I guess I'll start believing the day I see it."

And once again she laughed.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

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