Becca Bartelheimer was 3 when her mom tried to open a savings account for her and learned someone had beaten her to it.

The credit union told her someone else was using Becca's Social Security number. The Snohomish mother spent more than 1,000 hours trying to straighten things out and having a hold placed on Becca's credit record.

Andrew Brooke of Bothell was just 3 weeks old when someone using his name walked out of an Edmonds clinic with a prescription painkiller, leaving behind $94 in unpaid medical bills.

Stacy Hayes and her 2-year-old son, Cooper, got a letter from the Snohomish County prosecutor's office last month informing them they were both victims of identity theft. The thief was caught, but no one can tell the Bothell mother how their personal information was stolen.

Millions of adults say they've been victimized by identity theft — the FBI calls it one of the fastest-growing crimes in America. Washington ranks No. 8 among the states in the number of identity-theft victims per 100,000, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

But it comes as a surprise that children, teens and young adults are being targeted by identity thieves and finding themselves with black marks on their credit records, sometimes before they even apply for their first credit card, get a driver's license or open a bank account. New federal statistics show nearly 250,000 people complained to the Federal Trade Commission in 2004 that their identities had been stolen. (Many people don't report the crime. A 2003 survey by the FTC found nearly 10 million people had been identity-theft victims.)

Of those who reported, 4 percent of them were under age 18, up from 2 percent in 2002.

But that number is almost certainly low. "Some don't discover they're victims ... until they're 18 or 19 and they try to open their own accounts. Then they realize their uncle has been using their Social Security number because he's driven his own credit into the ground," said Betsy Broder with the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

About 29 percent of identity-theft victims were between the ages of 18 and 29 in 2004.

Children are particularly appealing targets because so much time can go by before the crime is discovered. And it doesn't take much information for an identity thief to get started: just a name, an address and an account number or Social Security number.

An experienced criminal can make do with just a name and address, said Diane Terry, senior director, fraud victim assistance unit, with TransUnion, one of the nation's largest credit bureaus.

Even if a child has no credit history, an identity thief still could apply for a line of credit in the child's name with a relatively low credit limit — and that's enough to do some damage, Terry said.

Older teens and college-age students also are prime targets. Living in dormitories or apartments where people tend to come and go, Terry said, "means there's more risk just by the sheer number of people who have access to their information."

Family often a suspect

Identity thieves can be strangers who get children's information the same way they do with adults: by stealing mail or records that contain personal data, or by enticing the children themselves to provide the information — through a telemarketing or online scam, for example.

When the victim is a younger child, though, the most likely culprit is another family member or someone known to the family, said Linda Foley, co-executive director of nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego.

At least one-quarter of the center's calls from identity-theft victims involve children, she said, and the majority of those children were victimized by someone they knew — people with easy access to key information.

"When [adults] have mismanaged their own credit, their own lives, this offers a fresh start," Foley said.

Cases involving family members are perhaps the least likely to show up in official statistics. Families may be reluctant to report the theft and confront the situation, she said.

Even when the crime is reported, Foley said investigators may not take it seriously. "They don't see the danger for a 6-year-old. They fail to realize that it is going to get worse, and that child will turn 18 eventually and be unable to have a future."

In Seattle, an estimated 5 percent of the 3,000 or so identity-theft cases reported involve juveniles. But if you add in college-age students, the percentage increases to as much as 20 percent, said Seattle Police Detective Randy Woolery.

The burden for cleaning up the financial mess rests with the victim, and young victims may not know where to start or may put it off. Identity-theft victims often feel double-victimized, Woolery said, first by the identity thief and then by the difficulty of restoring their name.

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES Lyanne Asada, 23, became a victim of identity theft when someone broke into her apartment, stole a Bon-Macy's statement and charged $11,000 worth of merchandise.

Lyanne Asada of Seattle said she's spent days trying to sort out who charged $11,000 worth of jewelry, electronics and other items on her Bon-Macy's card.

The 23-year-old recent college graduate had just landed her first career-track job when her apartment was burglarized in October. At first, she thought only her jewelry was taken.

A few weeks later, when she got a bill from Bon-Macy's, Asada learned that the burglar also had stolen her Bon-Macy's account statement, then got a temporary credit card from the store and an increase in her credit limit. The charges are still on her account, with a fraud case pending.

"I feel like this is just hanging over my head," said Asada, who had to cancel other credit cards and put fraud alerts on her credit file. "I'm trying to be more cautious now" by shredding sensitive papers and carefully protecting her PIN during transactions. "Those are things that I never thought about doing before."

Teaching about ID theft

Many high-school seniors leave school with little or no financial education and may never have heard the phrase "identity theft."

A 2004 survey showed Washington high-school seniors earned a failing grade in their knowledge of consumer issues, correctly answering 56 percent of questions about saving, spending, income and money management. The survey was conducted for the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a nationwide organization teaching students about financial management.

Shorecrest High School in Shoreline is one of the few that still requires seniors to take a consumer economics class before graduation, and identity theft now takes up nearly a week.

Teachers Linda Cobb and Leslie Baker ask older students to order their credit reports and talk about the importance of protecting sensitive information.

"I have them pull out their wallets and go through them in front of the class. I almost always find a handful carrying their Social Security cards," Cobb said. "By the end of the [unit], they're not."

Young identity-theft victims and their families say it takes a long time to recover from the crime, and still they are left with the unsettling feeling that something uniquely theirs isn't anymore, as if their own fingerprint has been stolen from them.

John and Katrina Brooke were floored to get a collection notice from the Edmonds clinic for $94 in medical expenses allegedly incurred by their 3-week-old son.

"If it was my wife or I, I would have dropped it," John Brooke said. "But this was a 3-week-old baby. I just felt like I needed to know who's doing this to him? Who's victimizing kids?"

The clinic quickly canceled the debt. But Brooke said he's spent 150 hours or more trying to track down how his son's identity was swiped. He believes someone at the Eastside hospital where Andrew was born stole his information from medical records.

Stacy Hayes worries her family's information has been resold. She and her 2-year-old son were among 378 people whose personal information was found with an Arlington man.

Hayes didn't find out until the county prosecutor's office contacted them before the man was sentenced to eight years in prison for forgery and identity theft.

She also suspects the information came from the hospital where Cooper was born. "I'm a person who shreds or burns everything. I thought I was doing everything right."

Jolayne Houtz: 206-464-3122 or jhoutz@seattletimes.com