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 Judy Sullivan, 66, was recently given proof that a man who identified himself as Jack Sullivan in an undisclosed East Coast location was the same man who vanished 16 years ago after 25 years of marriage, The Spokesman-Review of Spokane reported Tuesday.
Jack Sullivan disappeared on June 11, 1991, after asking his wife to meet him for lunch. The couple lived in Temecula, Calif., at the time.
His brothers, a business partner and lifelong friends all said they had not heard from him since.
A judge declared him legally dead in 1999, and his wife began receiving monthly Social Security checks of $867.
Earlier this year, Social Security officials stopped sending the checks and demanded that Judy Sullivan repay more than $90,000, saying Jack Sullivan had been found.
The investigation that led to the cutoff of benefits was triggered by a man's application for a Social Security card and driver's license, and identification was confirmed through interviews and a distinctive scar on his nose, said Joy Chang, regional Social Security communications director in Seattle.
"We do a thorough investigation before we make a determination like that," Chang said.
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 Loss of the checks meant Judy Sullivan was unable to pay her debts with the $623 a month she continued getting in Supplemental Security Income, she told the newspaper.
However, Social Security officials have cleared her of fraud allegations and waived the demand for repayment of the $90,000.
She is hospitalized because of illness and cannot comment, said Lawrence A. Weiser, clinical law program director at Gonzaga University, where she had gone for help in getting her widow's benefits restored.
"It's pretty devastating to her," Weiser said.
Officials said privacy laws bar Social Security from putting her in contact with her husband or disclosing his whereabouts or other personal information, but Weiser said federal investigators learned that, since leaving his wife, Jack Sullivan had worked as a truck driver and lived in the Middle East for a time.
[Associated Press]
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