Time For Some Employee Rehabilitation

Over the past few weeks, I have been receiving many calls from a drug rehabilitation center trying to get in contact with a person whose name isn’t even close to mine who happens to have absconded from the center. I keep telling the rehab center that they have the wrong person but they don’t believe me.

Over the past week, the calls have turned to outright harassment with the person from the rehab center stating that they will call the police, have them trace my phone, and have me arrested for refusing to return to the rehab center.

My husband and I finally get sick of this due to the fact that they have called me on my cell phone fifteen times in one day, and we decide to get the local sheriff’s department involved. I make sure to bring the four forms of government-issued photo ID that I possess to the sheriff’s office, and we talk to a very nice deputy who decides to call the rehab center. The following conversation happens when the deputy calls the rehab center.

Deputy: “Hello, this is [Deputy] from the [County] Kentucky sheriff’s office. I have just been contacted by a citizen who claims that you have been repeatedly calling her cell phone insisting that she is [Person]. Is this true?”

Rehab Employee: “Yes! She is lying about her identity, and we were about to call you to have her arrested because she has absconded from our facility!”

Deputy: “I have just looked at her four forms of government-issued photo identification, including a federal military dependent ID, a driver’s license, a passport, and a Kentucky Concealed Weapons License. She is definitely not who you are looking for, and I demand that you stop calling her, or harassment charges will be filed against you!”

Rehab Employee: “NO, I WILL NOT STOP CALLING! She probably forged those documents! I demand that you arrest her for fraud!”

Deputy: “All of her identification looks legitimate. She has also shown me her Social Security card, several credit cards, a checkbook in her name with her current address, and a Kentucky-issued hunting and fishing license. I also looked her up on Facebook, and the photos of her match up with the forms of ID she presented and what she currently looks like now. You definitely have the wrong person, so I suggest that you stop calling her!”

Rehab Employee: “But she must have forged everything! Arrest her now for fraud!”

Deputy: “If she did forge her identification, she must be a real criminal genius, because her identification 100% matches the security features put in each respective piece of ID! She is not who you are looking for! Can I speak to a supervisor, please?”

The employee begrudgingly puts a supervisor on the line. The deputy talks to the supervisor and asks for identifying details for the person that they are actually looking for and runs those details through their system. Lo and behold, a mugshot for the person that they are looking for shows that I look NOTHING like her. The deputy is very angry now.

Deputy: “How dare your employee keep calling this poor woman over and over again insisting that she is [Person]?! I ran the person who you are looking for through our system, and the mugshot that came up definitely does not match the woman who is here with me! What is your response to this?”

Rehab Supervisor: “We thought that we were calling the right person because [Person] listed this phone number on her profile shortly before she absconded. How were we to know that we were calling the wrong person?”

Deputy: “If she kept insisting that she was the wrong person, why didn’t you notify the police so we could look up who her phone number is registered to? I just checked, and her cell phone number has been registered to her for the past five years! Your client gave you a bad phone number and your employee decided to harass this woman for the past three weeks! I am going to ask her if she wants to press harassment charges on your employee!”

I did decide to press harassment charges on the employee who kept making the calls. The employee ended up being fired from the rehab and had to pay a fine for harassment AND restitution to me for blowing up my phone for those weeks. I hope that the rehab decided to give their employees better training on how to handle absconders who list a bad contact number.