Everyone knows identity theft sucks. But what do you do when someone commits a reprehensible crime, grabs the news headlines, and they legitimately share your same name? Well, first, you make sure your friends aren’t punking you with an elaborate prank. Next, you begin nursing a sinking feeling in your gut as you respond to a volley of phone calls and texts from acquaintances, friends, and loved ones.
This (not so) lovely coincidence came to pass for me in late 2016 when another Michael Gerhardt in my same town of Boise, Idaho was arrested and eventually found guilty of several charges related to the soliciting of and acts of who-knows-what with young minor females. Now if my “doppelnämer” (yes, I’m making that word up and am going to over-use the heck out of it) had been arrested for just about anything else, I could have had a few laughs with my friends, shook my head, and written off the incident as a ridiculous coincidence.
But in these days of quick Google searches to learn more about a prospective business associate, your kid’s little league coach, or the guy who just asked you out on a date, the articles about my doppelnämer were basically a worst-case scenario as far as doppelnämer coincidences go. Being in the advertising/marketing industry, I know lots of people and have business associates across the valley. I’m in my 7th year of coaching or assistant coaching my son’s sports teams. I was single and in the dating world at the time of the incident. And though it is becoming less and less frequent of an occurrence, I still occasionally experience ramifications as a result.
After becoming aware of a recent such occurrence, I finally decided to take some action of my own to help add clarity to the situation. I began by contacting all the news sources with articles on the first page of Google results when searching my name, and requested that they please add the individual’s middle name (different from mine) to all their articles. To my surprise, almost all of my contacts replied quickly and took the requested action. I then started adding my middle name, “Heinrich”, to many more of my personal and business communications, particularly in first-contact situations. And finally, I created this site, not with the intent to bury the headlines on Google searches. That will likely never happen. I created it to at least have something out there, that hopefully climbs higher in Google search rankings to be easily found when searching my name in Boise or when the keywords “Mike”, “Michael”, “Gerhardt”, “Boise” are combined in a search.
Let’s be clear. The only real victims in this story are those behind the headlines of the news stories noted above. But if you ever find yourself a victim of a doppelnämer (ok, I promise that’s the last time I’ll use that “word”) hopefully you can relate to the above and some of the steps I took can be of help to you as well. I’d only advise that you take those steps sooner than I did.