ST. LOUIS – The wife of an Army veteran pleaded for help after the government misplaced their pension checks. No one knew the location of the checks, which the couple desperately needed to survive.

It’s been a nightmare for Val Kovac and her husband, Army veteran Michael Martin Kovac. The couple lives at an assisted living center in south St. Louis. They haven’t received Michael’s $2,000-a-month Army pension check since August.

The couple moved from their south city home to the assisted living center, and that’s when the trouble struck. They had informed the VA and the U.S. Postal Service of their move. But it’s been four consecutive months without checks.

“I think it’s stinky (that) they were doing it. They were sending the checks to the bank, then all of a sudden they just stopped,” Val said. “And I called and asked did we get cancelled for anything for some reason, and they said, ‘No, no; you should be getting your checks.’”

Val said she’s reached out to Veterans Affairs multiple times, only to be told to wait until next month. She said the government told her that the checks had not been cashed.

However, the couple is just scraping by.

“I really would like the people who are responsible for that to either issue us new checks and cancel the old ones,” Val said. “Surely, if you run the government and work with the Treasurer Department, you ought to be able to cancel a check and issue a new one, cause we were counting on that for our assisted living over here.”

FOX 2 contacted the VA and received an email saying, “We would need a privacy release signed by the veteran that specifies what information we can and cannot release.” We wrote back and explained that they could reach out to the Kovacs and begin sorting this mess out. The VA representative we contacted assured us they would reach out to them.

So far, there’s been no solution from the VA, but we’ll update you when the Kovacs are compensated for their trouble.