“More Than One Juan” – Dealing With The Name Mix Up!

     I am convinced that my name – Juan Garcia – is all too common in the U.S. I first noticed this trend while in middle school, where I shared a class with someone with the same name, and yeah it was kind of cool at first, but quickly became annoying in high school, where the amount of Juan Garcia’s tripled. Students and teachers would often mistake me for the other Juan Garcia’s at the school. This still wasn’t too bad, however, after high school I found my identity constantly becoming mixed up with other people. Although the prevalence of my name had something to do with the mix up, it is no excuse for some of the careless people – working in government agencies – who don’t pay attention to detail.

Incident #1 (Juan Garcia can’t drive!) 

 In 2001 I had my license suspended because of a Juan Garcia who lived in Orange county. Apparently, he was cited for driving on the wrong side of the road, was ticketed, summoned to court, and then never showed up – guess who’s licence got suspended? I didn’t even find out until I was in an auto accident 6 months later. When the officer ran my license through their system, they informed me that I had been driving on a suspended license the entire time - I had never received notification. My car was now totalled, and my license suspended: I rode my bike to work for the next month and half. I went back and forth with the DMV for weeks, and had to appear in court. It turns out that a police station employee carelessly tagged me as this person, despite the fact that we had very different birthdays and social security numbers. Nonetheless, I got everything cleaned up, but I had to do a lot of work to get if off my record, and had to bum rides off people for weeks!

Incident #2 (Juan Garcia is photogenic!)

While crossing the border by foot,  back into the U.S,  from an afternoon spent in Tijuana last summer, I found out that my U.S passport had been compromised. When it was finally my turn to present my passport to the border patrol agent – after standing in line for an hour - the scanned passport brought up the image of someone else in their computer system! The perplexed agent then asked me (in Spanish), what was bringing me to the U.S. I answered (in English), “I’m returning home.” The agent continued questioning me in Spanish, and I continued answering in English. The moment that I asked what could be done to rectify the situation and fix my passport (that was now linked to someone Else’s photograph in their computer), he chuckled and lazily demanded that I continue moving along into the U.S. Yes, it would have been time consuming and inconvenient, to say the least, but I would have appreciated  some assistance in fixing this issue – go figure. At any rate, this was another situation where my common name had caused confusion – my frustration was brewing.

Incident #3 (Juan Garcia is my baby’s daddy!)

Lastly, I received notification from San Bernardino county last year stating that I owed child support for my infant child. For those of you who know me, I don’t have children! I had to fax over a written statement to their offices, which included photographs of myself and my drivers license. They presented the material to the mother (whom I had never met in my life) to have her verify if I was the father. I was also informed that I might be required to go into a local lab for genetic testing. Luckily, the mother did not pin me as the culprit! This incident is still showing up in my background check, as a cleared issue – but I want it COMPLETELY removed. They assured me that this was not a case of identity theft, but again, the result of someones clerical error.

 ***As you can see, my name has brought me my own share of grief, but I can’t help to wonder how these circumstances would have turned out differerently if my mother would have named me her second, very UN-Latino, name choice: Kevin.