In order to obtain our residency visa in Ecuador, we need to have multiple copies of our life documents (birth certificate, criminal reports, etc.). These need to obtained and apostilled within 90 days of our visa application. We've been able to obtain all of the documents except one: our marriage certificate.
A question that I get frequently: what is apostillation? A notary public will verify that I am the person that signed a document but doesn't take a position on whether the document is valid or not; he will just check my ID and confirm that I signed it in his presence. Having a document apostilled will confirm that the information on the document is correct. This involves two steps: obtaining the document and validating the document.
For our marriage certificate, we needed to obtain the document in Los Angeles county (where it's filed in the recorders office) and have it apostilled by the office of the Secretary of State in Sacramento. Step one: get the document.
Emily and I drove to Lancaster to visit the LA county recorders office to get the document. (Lancaster is a high desert city with no attractions - it's a drive-through city on Hwy 14 northeast of LA.) We drove down on Sunday and visited the office Monday morning. We had been told that a mail/email request could take weeks to process, but an office visit should get us the document in an hour or so.
We went to the clerk and presented our request. She disappeared into the back office for a couple of minutes before returning; she had three copies of our certificate! We were feeling pretty good about the process and the quick turnaround when she started looking at the certs. She picked them up and went to talk to her supervisor. After she returned (about 15 minutes), she said that the marriage date on the copies that they had on file were too faint and unreadable. No problem, she said; she would email a request to the main office in Norwalk and she would call us that afternoon when they were ready.
Norwalk is a not-for-tourist city in south LA county, bordered by not-so-touristy cities of Bellflower, Compton and Downey. If you ever visit LA, go to Disneyland instead.
Now for the fun. To try to expedite the process, Emily and I decided to drive to Norwalk about 80 miles away to see if we could offer assistance. (Of course, we had the pleasure of navigating LA's fine freeways getting there.) The supervisor we wound up talking with said that she had received the email request, there was nothing we could do, and that, "These things take time". When we asked for a time estimate, she glared at us and said to return to Lancaster.
We were returning to Lancaster and were about ten miles away when Emily noticed that it looked like it was raining up ahead. One problem: the "rain" was brown. Sandstorm!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08L8FgCiwNA&feature=player_embedded
(Apologies: I didn't take the video and this was the best I could find.)
The sandstorm was pretty nasty: 60 mph winds and sand getting into our eyes, ears and everywhere else. We had to go to Target to get underclothes (we had only packed for a one night stay), and the walk from the parking lot to the door was pelting us hard. We spent an hour browsing Target hoping that the storm would die down. Browsing Target for that long is a difficult thing to do! We tried out the patio furniture, played video games on the PlayStation displayed, ate popcorn and browsed the magazines. That's an hour of my life that I'll never get back!
Not hearing anything from the recorders office, we headed back to the hotel we had stayed at the night before around 3:00p . We were able to get a room and found out later that we were fortunate to do so. During the evening reception (dinner and a glass of wine), we learned that the Highway Patrol had closed the freeway north of Lancaster and that the hotel had filled up. Even if we could get our marriage certificate that afternoon, we wouldn't be able to leave town; the freeway wouldn't be opened until sometime Tuesday morning.
We got up the next morning to a very pleasant, sunny day; the storm had died down overnight and the sand wasn't blowing anymore. We went back to the recorders office to follow up on our request. The clerk recognized us and brought her supervisor over to talk with us. After explaining that we had driven down from San Francisco to try to get this done, she said that she would do what she could to escalate the process.
To kill time, we would up chatting with Jerry the security guard. Jerry is probably in his mid-60's and sounds like he's lived a very interesting life. He used to work security at a Hollywood studio with his 165 lb Rottweiler guard dog Duke. One day, a group of stage workers were coming out of one of the sets when Duke started growling. Jerry tried to calm his dog, but as the workers got closer Duke started growling even more. Eventually, Duke launched himself at one of the workers and tackled him. Jerry was thinking "lawsuit" as he approached the worker but instead discovered a .357 revolver tucked in his pants. The worker confessed that he had been planning to kill Ann-Margaret. He was arrested. Ann-Margaret insisted that Jerry and Duke continue to remain on the payroll until the completion of filming.
Finally, around 1:00p, the supervisor came out to the lobby with our certificates! Everything was legible and we were good to go! We were back on the road for our 6 1/2 hour drive back to San Mateo. Even though we lost a day during the week that we're closing on the house, all's well that ends well!
Here's to hoping that our process in Sacramento goes more smoothly...
(An update: apostilling in Sacrament took five minutes!)
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