SEQUIM – They came, loaded with their decades-old checkbooks, phone bills and bank statements.
“I’ve got it all . . . back to the mid-1980s,” said Chuck Meacham of Sequim, a retired fisheries biologist and one of at least 60 people who waited for the Poulsbo-based Turbo Shred truck to arrive at the Sequim Transit Center on Wednesday evening.
The truck was scheduled to shred at 5 p.m., but it appeared at 5:28 p.m. on Cedar Street, where the long line of bag- and box-bearing residents of the North Olympic Peninsula stood waiting.
“I’ve got a shredder at home, but it’s a small one,” said Sheila Lauder of Port Townsend.
“I could spend the entire winter shredding.”
Joann and Paul Hansen of Port Hadlock also trekked to Sequim with several sacks of bank statements and “Real Estate stuff” from the past six years.
Ray Nelson of Sequim said that he too has a shredder at home, but that it only cuts paper into strips, and that’s not safe enough.
Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, on his 14-city “Guard It!” identity-theft prevention tour, also stopped in Sequim on Wednesday.
During his noontime talk with the Kiwanis Club, he advised buying a home shredder that cross-cuts documents instead of only slicing them into strips.
The majority of identity thieves are drug abusers, he said, adding, “we’ve seen meth addicts tape the strips back together. They’re up all night; they’ve got time.”
Robert Bowman, another Port Townsend resident, brought just two bags of credit card statements and checks, saved “since God knows when.”
Ken Elliott of Port Angeles said he has saved papers to destroy for 25 years.
“The older we get, the more we procrastinate,” he said.
Those who shred at home should “shred smart,” said Kristin Alexander, a staffer in the state Attorney General’s Office.
Shred checks and the copies of checks – anything with account numbers, and certainly anything bearing your social security number, she added.
But most junk mail can go into your recyclables, with the exception of those pre-approved credit-card offers.
Alexander recommends shredding them – and having your name removed from the credit-card companies’ mailing lists by phoning 188-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688).
Alexander was delighted to see the vigorous turnout in Sequim, and said that Bremerton’s shredding day drew just two people.
In McKenna’s hometown of Bellevue, however, a shredding truck with an 8-ton capacity was nearly full after three hours.
