April Fool Foul-Up : DMV Mix-Up on Name, Birth Date Has Woman Fighting to Keep Her License

It has the makings of a classic April Fool’s joke: A computer is rejiggered sothat it secretly strips away one person’s identity and gives it to someone else.

Don’t expect Dorothy Weed to be in much of a laughing mood today, however. Not when she is standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Bellflower, hoping to finally untangle the 17-year-old April Fool’s Day foul-up that has threatened to land her in jail.

Since 1976, police in Northern California have confused the Norwalk woman with a Stockton woman who keeps getting--and ignoring--traffic tickets.

The Stockton motorist does not have a driver’s license. But her name and birth date are similar to Weed’s--April 1, 1946. And each time police pull the Stockton woman over and run her name through their computer, Weed’s license number pops out.

Weed’s current license expires today. When she tried to renew it earlier this month, the DMV refused, citing the unpaid traffic tickets that have piled up in Stockton.

To add injury to insult, officials told her they were revoking her driving privileges.

Since then, Weed has worried that she might be stopped by a traffic officer and hustled off to jail. And when she learned it could take up to three months for Sacramento officials to clear up the confusion, the manufacturing company treasurer began worrying about a different problem--the lack of an ID anyone will accept.

“They don’t understand up there: I live in Norwalk. We don’t carry cash--we cash checks,” Weed said.

Stockton Police Sgt. Mark Kurland acknowledges that the mix-up occurred when someone mistakenly linked Weed’s license number with the Stockton woman’s name in his department’s computer.

“This is a mess,” Kurland said. “It’s not like we’re a little cow town up here. But if you pull a Macy’s card or food stamp card out when you get pulled over, the officer goes out of his way if it looks like you’re an upstanding citizen who just left your driver’s license at home.”

Weed’s name has been purged from Stockton’s computer, Kurland said Wednesday. And the Stockton courts agreed to dismiss the tickets after he pointed out “there’s a major, major” difference in the physical description of the two women. One is white and weighs 130 pounds; the other is black and weighs 198.

The DMV worker handling Weed’s case in Sacramento refused to discuss it--”I don’t have anything to say about this,” she snapped.

But Kurland has sent written documentation of her innocence for Weed to show Bellflower DMV clerks today. Weed also plans to take a note from her employer to prove she’s from Norwalk, not Stockton.

“I thought I had a clean name and a clean record. Now every time a policeman drives by I get panicky,” Weed said.

“Who was the fool? Me. Nobody takes you seriously when you’re born on April 1.”