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Steamboat Springs — Ten years worth of Social Security numbers for 1,300 past and present employees was compromised Tuesday night when a laptop was stolen from the Steamboat Springs School District office.

The laptop of District Finance Director Dale Mellor was the only item of value stolen from the offices at the George P. Sauer Human Services Center on Seventh Street. On the laptop, Mellor had a spreadsheet containing the Social Security numbers and names of their owners. The spreadsheet was created as part of a requirement from a past district audit.

The laptop was password-protected, but district officials are warning their employees to be on the lookout for any potential identity theft.

"We have been giving them the three credit agency Web sites and phone numbers," Superintendent Shalee Cunningham said.

Steamboat Springs High School science teacher Cindy Gay said she notified her bank and set up a fraud alert with the credit agencies by Wednesday afternoon.

As a former victim of identity theft, Gay said she knew it could be a long process to correct potential damage.

"Going through all the reporting was long and painful," she said. "It would be much easier to be proactive than reactive."

Gay's credit card information was stolen from a hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2000. It was more than a year later when mysterious charges appeared on her bill. Gay ultimately did not lose any money in the identity theft.

Cunningham said Mellor also used the laptop to access the district's financial database and direct-deposit system. That system contains bank information for all employees in the district but is protected by a firewall, she said.

"Ultimately with his computer, they could get into the network and cause havoc," she said. "(But) we don't have any reason to believe they have a way to get into that."

She said district staff have been watching the network today and have not yet seen any attempts to access the database. The school district's directory lists 312 current employees.

The district contacted all current employees, but about two-thirds of the individuals on the list no longer work in the district. Cunningham said the district plans to advertise and create a database to notify past employees of the breach.

According to Colorado law, if a private entity has a breach of security, they are required to notify anyone affected by the breach. Because the school district is not a private entity, that law does not apply. But Cunningham said that as a precaution, she sent an e-mail to all staff Wednesday morning advising them to check their financial records.

"JD Paul from the police department has asked that all of us scrutinize all credit accounts and bank accounts to be sure they have not been jeopardized," she wrote.

Burglary

Officer JD Paul, of the Steamboat Springs Police Department, said five interior doors were damaged at the district offices, where he said the laptop was stolen some time between 7 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.

The office of the financial director for the Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services, housed in the same building, also was burglarized. A blank deposit book was stolen from the BOCES office.

Jane Toothaker, executive director of BOCES, said the doors to the main office, the financial office and a supply closet were broken.

"There wasn't anything in there that they would be able to use for anything," she said.

Paul said he suspects the burglars were not students trying to make a mess because the closet contained buckets of paint that were not disturbed.

The financial office has no sign outside the door, Toothaker said, yet none of the other offices were disturbed.

"I don't know if they would have been looking for petty cash, but that's in our safe," she said.

Police this morning found no apparent point of entry into the building, but Cunningham said she suspects a door facing Eighth Street leading into the gymnasium was left unlocked last night. A tool like a crowbar apparently was used to pry open interior doors.

"We took some evidence from some of the doors. We got some good fingerprints from some of them," Paul said. "It looked like they were probably in a hurry. : There are a lot of valuable things they could have taken."

- To reach Zach Fridell, call 871-4208

or e-mail zfridell@steamboatpilot.com