Government declared him dead; but this Richmond vet is alive and needs his retirement pay

RICHMOND, Va. -- Bills are piling up for a Richmond veteran who hasn’t received his retirement check in months. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) sent a letter to Warren Holmes’s address in January stating the agency believed he was dead.

“They said they couldn’t talk to me because I couldn’t give them the answers to the (security) questions,” Holmes told the Problem Solvers of his call to DFAS.

The 71-year-old served in the United States Army from 1968-1988. He said he can’t remember the answers he wrote down on a DFAS security form decades ago.

Holmes claimed he spent months spinning his wheels trying to find a way to reinstate his retirement pay before eventually contacting CBS 6.

“Right after you got involved, they called not quite a week later and told me how sorry they were and that my money would be here,” Holmes said in an interview with Problem Solver Bree Sison last week.

A representative for DFAS could only tell CBS 6 that they are working with the veteran.

Holmes believes the back pay will total about $3,500.

While he had some savings to hold him over in the months without a check, he must now catch up on things like his health insurance premiums and phone bill.

“I asked them (DFAS) who told them I was dead and still to this day, they won’t tell me where they got that information from,” said Holmes.

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