I found out my own mother opened six credit cards in my name and destroyed my credit score

She kept a photocopy of her daughter’s Social Security card for thirty years. Then she used it.

Six credit cards. One personal loan. $87,000 in debt. A credit score that dropped from 780 to 419. All in my name. All at my mother’s address. All without my knowledge.

I’m going to list them because I think the numbers matter. I think you need to see them the way I saw them, one after another, on a six-page credit report I printed at the Tulsa Public Library because my printer was out of ink and I couldn’t wait.

My name is Loretta. I’m fifty-two. I work as an office manager at a podiatry clinic on South Lewis. I have worked there for eleven years. I raised my son Kevin mostly by myself after his father left when Kevin was four. Kevin is twenty-eight now. He’s an electrician. He’s good at it. We were six months from closing on a condo together — the first property either of us has ever owned.

Were. Past tense.

The first call came on a Thursday. I was at my desk. Capital One collections. A woman with a professional voice and a script.

“Good afternoon, may I speak with Loretta Simmons? This is regarding a past-due balance on your Capital One Platinum Visa ending in 4471.”

“I don’t have a Capital One card.”

“Ma’am, the account is registered under your name and Social Security number. The current balance is $8,400 with a minimum payment past due of $380.”

“I didn’t open that account.”

She paused. “The billing address on file is 1847 East 38th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

My hands went cold. That’s my mother’s address.

I said I’d call back. I hung up. I sat at my desk for six minutes without moving. Then I called Equifax.

The credit report came through the next morning. I printed it at the library on my lunch break. Six pages. I sat in my car in the library parking lot and read every line.