Assist Sarah in Her Time of Need

Hi, I’m Sarah. I’m 43, single, and legally blind. I became disabled at age 11 due to a brain tumor. SHORT STORY: The State of Illinois says I owe them $50,256 in disability benefits. Please help if you can. If you can’t, no worries. God bless you all!

LONG STORY: From 2007 until 2021, I worked as a full time employee of the State of Illinois (SOI). I gave everything I had mentally, physically, and emotionally for the Department I worked for for the last 11 years because I believed in the importance of the job I was doing.

in turn, the SOI Department refused to accommodate me at times or offered insufficient or truly unhelpful accommodation and treated me terribly. I started getting really bad migraines that would last for days and my eyes were becoming much more sensitive. In 2021, I didn’t feel like I could keep going on. Between terrible stress from work and my physical health suffering I needed help, so my doctor and I decided that I needed to take a disability leave.

I started receiving temporary disability benefits from the SOI retirement program. After I had been receiving them for a year, they required me to apply for Social Security Disability (SSDI). This wasn’t what I wanted, so first I thought I would try resuming work if I could work remotely due to my health issues.

I submitted a reasonable accommodation request dated September 12, 2022, to my SOI Department asking to be allowed to work remotely (as we had previously been doing during lockdown) when my leave ended. On October 6, 2022, I received a denial letter saying, “Granting your request in full would constitute an undue hardship on the Department,” They did permit, “Your visual assistance devices can be used in the office…”

Without receiving the accommodation, I had no hope of being able to try resuming work. My only option left was to go through with the application for SSDI. It took a long time to get approved, but I finally was approved for SSDI starting December 2023. Immediately upon being approved, the SOI retirement program notified me that I now owe them $50,256.00. Essentially, they are making me pay them back the equivalent of what I could have earned in SSDI for every month I received temporary benefits prior to being approved.

I am now on a very tight, fixed budget with no hopes of that changing and I only have my income to depend on. I don’t know how I’m going to live on the SSDI but now I have this too! I hate asking for help, but I have no one else.

All money raised up to $50,256.00 will be paid to the State of Illinois State Employee Retirement System (SERS).

(Photo by Sarah Jahn, October 2013)