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SALT LAKE CITY — Imagine living, working, paying taxes, and voting in Utah for more than 50 years only to find out the government thinks you really don't exist.
That is the situation a Utah woman, Rhonda Buchanan, faced when she tried to get a new driver's license.
Buchanan was born in Bryson City, N.C., 60 years ago. Four years later, her family moved to Salt Lake City. Now, she can't prove to bureaucrats that she exists.
"It's obvious to anyone who's paying attention that I was born in the United States," she said.
It's not so obvious to the people who operate Utah's Department of Motor Vehicles. Rhonda never got a birth certificate. She enrolled in schools, into college, had jobs, paid taxes, even managed to get a driver's license and Social Security card.
"Nobody has ever asked for it before," she said.
Someone did ask for it when she tried to renew her drivers license one year ago.
"There's a law that they passed that says you have to have your birth certificate in order to get your driver's license," she explained.
That law passed by Utah lawmakers took effect in 2010. It says drivers have to show a certified copy of their birth certificate or U.S. passport to get a license. Buchanan doesn't have either.
Though she's had a Utah driver's license since 1972, the DMV wasn't budging.
"Why aren't I in their computer? Why can't they go back 40 years? They had pictures of me," she asked.
You have to have a state ID or a driver's license, or you don't exist.
–Rhonda Buchanan
The DMV gave Buchanan a year to get a certified delayed birth certificate from North Carolina. She said she sent authorities there everything she could find - school records, church records, Social Security records, even affidavits from family members who were there when she was born. Still, no birth certificate.
"I work and I pay taxes and I've never been arrested or convicted of a crime. I don't understand why they're not willing to work with me on this," she said.
She even tried to find a lawyer who'd get a court order forcing the state to issue her a birth certificate. But she couldn't find one willing to help.
"One of them told me I should just go back there and stay until I get it straightened out. But you can't do that when you have a job," she said.
Time ran out two weeks ago and Rhonda lost her license.
"You have to have a state ID or a driver's license, or you don't exist," she said.
KSL contacted MykeAnne Hurst, a manager at Utah's driver license division.
"What happened to Rhonda is she provided a document to us from the state where she was born that said they were issuing a delayed birth certificate," Hurst said.
She said North Carolina, however, never sent such a certificate.
"So since there was going to be a certificate issued, we were unable to move her through the exception process at that time," Hurst explained.
So, Buchanan was stuck in between a North Carolina promise to send a certificate and it never arriving. That left her non-existent until we persuaded the DMV to see what North Carolina refused to see -- that Rhonda was a real person.
"If she could get us a letter that there was nothing on file, then we would go ahead and push her through as an exception," Hurst said.
Two more weeks of phone calls and finally Buchanan got that letter from North Carolina saying, finally - after more than a year - there will be no birth certificate coming.
Because she didn't have a license, we drove Buchanan to the DMV so she could deliver that letter in person and finally get her license.
"People can go through life with just a hospital certificate or church records and it used to be acceptable," she said. "But nowadays, with identity theft, citizenship requirements, you have to have the government-issued documents."
