A large bag with files including names, addresses, and social security numbers was found left in a bag on a sidewalk near Charleston and Eastern.
Our 13 Action News morning crew was in the area working on a home invasion story, when they noticed a large black trash bag left on the sidewalk that appeared to have medical files.
We found dozens of files from the early 2000's of pets from the St. Francis Animal Hospital. Each had the owners' names, phone numbers, addresses, and social security numbers.
The bag was left in an area where anyone could have easy picked it up and gained access to that personal information.
We called some of the numbers left in the files, and almost all of them were out of date. We found one number from 15 years ago still working. It belonged to a couple in Henderson. Ron and Doris Toltzman were shocked when we called them. We brought them the file, and they couldn't even remember going to the animal hospital.
"That's my social security number," Ron said. He says the information from November 2000 was from a one time trip to the vet for their son's dog, Rudy, who had a tumor removed for $350.
He couldn't believe his information was even still in their system nearly 17 years later, and even more shocked it had apparently been left by the street. "That animal hospital should be reprimanded," he said.
We went to the animal hospital looking for answers. A worker there told us the bag was one of several that was supposed to be picked up Friday. They left the bags on the side of the building, and have no idea how this bag was moved.
They speculated it could have either fallen off the truck, or a homeless person could have looked through it and then left it there.
The worker there didn't know the name of the shredding company that was supposed to come pick up the bags of outdated patient files. We will continue to investigate.
