A move to the Sunshine State turned into an identity crisis for one Lee County woman, and it had nothing to do with paperwork she forgot to bring. Karen Marshall, 51, walked into her local DMV expecting a routine license transfer after relocating from South Dakota. Instead, she walked out without a license and with a lot of questions about who she actually is.
The trouble started when clerks compared her birth certificate to the name she has used her entire life. According to Marshall, her birth certificate lists her father as Ronald Stiffen, while she has always gone by Hendrix, the last name tied to the man she believed was her stepfather. Turns out her mother changed Karen’s name when she was a year and a half old, around the time she married that stepfather, and never told her.
For most of her life, that discrepancy never mattered, reported Gulf Coats News. Marshall says she went through school, got married, voted, and held a Real ID driver’s license in more than one state without a single hiccup, including a two minute renewal in South Dakota just last year. Florida’s DMV, however, wasn’t willing to look past the mismatch, leaving her without the one document most of us take for granted every time we hop in the car…