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SOS documents found in auctioned storage locker

Posted December 12, 2007 10:00 pm

Bruce Rushton

It pays to pay your storage-locker fees. Just ask Sheryl Lovell.

John Adams of Kane, in southern Greene County, got a call recently from Northend Storage in Springfield, according to the Alton Telegraph.

The person who owned the contents of the storage locker that Adams had purchased last spring at an auction wanted her things back, the Telegraph reported. And so Adams started going through stuff he'd purchased after the locker's renter failed to pay storage charges.

Adams called the secretary of state's office after opening a cardboard box and finding a file that contained uncashed checks, vehicle titles, death certificates, Social Security numbers, disabled parking placard applications, medical histories and an empty bag with Lovell's name on it.

Lovell, a secretary of state employee and the apparent deadbeat locker renter, is now on unpaid leave while Secretary of State Police investigate.

"The Secretary of State Police sent me an itemized inventory of everything I turned over to them," Adams told the Telegraph. "I knew by a cursory look when I first found them that it affected a lot of people, but the inventory alone lists 125 people that were affected all over the state."

Lovell could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Henry Haupt, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said he couldn't comment on the investigation. But he said most of the people who were due titles found by Adams had already received new ones from the state. Anyone who didn't will get expedited service, he added.

"We're doing everything we can to get them to them ASAP," Haupt said.

The titles would have been good to no one but the rightful owners of vehicles, Haupt noted, although he acknowledged crooks willing and able to forge signatures might have been able to take advantage.

The secretary of state's office last year began developing an automated tracking system based on bar codes that will eventually enable officials to instantly ascertain where titles are within the office, Haupt said. The agency decided to create the system to improve service, not in response to any single event, he said.

The state is careful, Haupt said.

"We want to assure the public that we're doing everything we can to service them in the most efficient manner possible and to safeguard all their information," he said.

Bruce Rushton can be reached at (217) 788-1542 or bruce.rushton@sj-r.com.

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