Meet The Woman Who Followed Her Identity Thief for Two Years

Jessamyn Lovell, of Albuquerque, has curly brown hair cut just above the shoulder.

Yet about five years ago, Erin Hart stole Lovell’s identity, using Lovell’s stolen ID cards to check into a San Francisco hotel. Lovell learned of the crime when the San Francisco police contacted her. Bills and citations soon started pouring in—presumably the result of Hart’s spree, though Lovell can’t definitively connect Hart to the three damaged cars rented in her name, parking tickets, and charges for petty theft and toll evasion.Perhaps once, before she bleached it a brassy orange, Erin Hart, of San Francisco, had similar hair. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Now Lovell, an artist, photographer, and college instructor, has turned the tables. After an arduous and expensive process of clearing her name, Lovell hired a private investigator, tracked down the woman they believe was Hart, and over a period of two years followed her, taking grainy, surveillance-style photos of her own identity thief.

Thirty-two of the resulting images, plus other documentation of her ordeal, were displayed last fall at the San Francisco Camerawork gallery—the same gallery, in fact, from which Lovell’s wallet was stolen in 2011. (The photos and artifacts will also be published as book, “Dear Erin Hart,” by San Francisco Camerawork later this month; and will be shown publicly again, at the Colorado Photographic Art Center in Denver, from February 26 through March 28.)