Margaret Swoboda celebrated her 100th birthday in April. Fearful of contracting COVID, she decided against the big party her family had planned and chose to mark the milestone with a few of them at a nearby restaurant.
But a couple months later, unbeknownst to her, the federal government sent its own form of centenary greeting to her Northeast Portland home: a foreboding letter demanding she prove she was still among the living.
Absent that, the $2,400 a month she receives in federal pension benefits would be cut off…