RICHMOND, Va. -- An update to a story we first told you about two years ago.
A Caroline County hotel worker who was laid off during the pandemic could not get her benefits from the Virginia Employment Commission.
You may recall hundreds of thousands of Virginians were unable to get help from the VEC from the very start of the pandemic.
When I contacted the VEC in 2021 about Sandra Sims' case, they said someone would reach out to her.
Someone did and shortly thereafter, I was told that her case, which involved someone using her identity to steal her benefits, would be resolved.
It was - but only partially.
Fast forward to 2023, when two weeks ago she asked me to reach back out to the VEC to resolve the five weeks of benefits that remained outstanding.
"Every week I say it: escalated to where?” Sims said. “I say, ‘please let me speak to somebody else because this gets on my nerves very bad. Why do you keep telling me the same thing and after all these years? I still don't have a result.’ They haven't resolved my issue yet. I say who's working? Nobody is working there, because nobody is doing their job."
I contacted the VEC and was told someone would again reach out to Sims. And they did.
Last week she received a check in the mail, for the balance of her outstanding claim.
Still, she says she doesn't understand why if she was repeatedly told her case was being escalated to a higher authority at the VEC, it took more than two years to fix.
When I asked the VEC spokesperson about that, she declined to comment.
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