Credit Reports Are Not Difficult to Read

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"My credit report was ten pages long full of credit card entries and associated collection agency entries," she says. Her parents' identities had been stolen in 1993, so it could be presumed at that point that whomever had stolen their identities had stolen mine as well. "The first person I called was my mom and I started crying saying I will never own anything."

When Axton Betz-Hamilton was 11 years old, her parents' identities were stolen. At that time, in the early 90s, consumer protection services for identity theft victims were basically non-existent. So the family dealt with the consequences as best they could. But when Axton Betz-Hamilton got to college, she realized that her identity had been stolen, too. In fact, her credit score was in the lowest 2%. As she was working to restore her credit, she inadvertently discovered who had stolen the family's identity: a woman named Pam Elliot. And knowing it was Pam Elliot would change everything for Axton Betz-Hamilton.

View the photograph Axton describes here.

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