California and the West : Another Life Stolen With a Web of Deceit

A week ago in this space, a story was told of a 30-year-old Los Angeles woman, a teaching aide who worked with elementary school children, whose life has been turned upside-down by a woman who stole her identity.

By using stolen identification, the second woman has been able to acquire credit cards, lodging and illegal welfare checks. She’s been sought for numerous other crimes. Whenever authorities go looking for her, they inevitably track down the right name, but the wrong woman.

Her story got a huge response.

A person who seeks to find attorneys for those who cannot afford one volunteered to assist the woman in getting some legal relief.

A person who is affiliated with a church organization in Las Vegas promised to help find the woman suitable employment. (The woman moved there recently, having lost her California apartment.)

A person who works for a Hollywood film and television studio offered to contact Oprah Winfrey, so the woman could continue to tell her story and confirm that she is not a criminal, but a victim.

“Why doesn’t she just change her name?” more than one person who heard her story has asked.

Robert Kay Jr. can explain.

“When you ask to have a name change,” he says, “the first thing they ask is: ‘Is this to hide a criminal record?’ ”

He should know.

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Kay is a screenwriter. He has spent more than 20 years trying to succeed in the business, but for the time being is living in Sacramento in a mobile home.

Something stalled his career.

“In 1981,” he is not shy about claiming, “I was the hottest writer in Hollywood, with the brightest future.”

A number of projects were in the works, he says. Deals were being discussed. Contracts were being drawn.

After selling a TV movie of the week in 1977 on spec, Kay says, contracts became a part of every deal. But every deal began to fall through.

He presumed these were simply the vagaries of the business. But associates were increasingly vague about why they had backed out on done deals.

Kay kept pitching scripts, but in time had to earn some money. His wife worked and supported them. He got occasional odd jobs, painting houses.

Years went by.

He wasn’t “blacklisted” in the 1950s sense of the word, but that’s how he felt, Hollywood’s doors having closed on him.

Not until 1993 did he smell a rat.

“My wife and I were hired to manage a Studio City apartment complex,” he says. “We were in the process of moving in, when we got a hysterical phone call from the owner.

“ ‘Because of information you deliberately deleted from your employment application, we’re not hiring you,’ the owner told me.”

Kay was surprised and confused. He was more surprised upon learning that a felony arrest for cocaine possession had been made, of a man claiming to be HIM.

He says, “I had somebody impersonate me to police. He gave them my name, my birth date and an old address of mine, because he had no ID on him, and the police apparently accepted it as gospel.”

And how did this individual happen to have access to these facts?

“The individual was my brother.”

It had never occurred to Kay until other, non-Hollywood jobs began to be denied him--even a house-painting position--that prospective employers were finding a criminal record while doing a cursory background check. Let alone that his older brother might be responsible.

He immediately called his brother about it, he says, only to be told, “You’ll never live to prove it.”

Things got worse. Others were also reportedly using the false ID. Records showed an arrest of one “Robert Kay” was of a man born in 1956. Kay was born in 1945, his brother Donald in 1940.

Now, whenever a police car appears in his rear-view mirror, Kay fears the worst.

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Like that woman caught in a similar web, Kay says he had never heard the term “identity theft” until this happened. Like her, he carries a letter from authorities at all times, hopeful a reader will believe it.

His brother, Kay regrets, has stopped at nothing, even “faking his death.” Kay says his own life has been anonymously threatened and that he sleeps with a shotgun.

“So, believe me, I understand what that poor woman is going through,” he empathizes.

Worse yet, these two victims must be just two of many.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com