TACOMA, Wash. - Jackie Hill is on a mission. Someone stole her credit card number. She doesn't know how or who did it, but she's on the hunt to find out.

The assistant county clerk of Benton County has driven five hours from her home in Kennewick to Tacoma to start her own investigation.

Over a two-day period in March, someone bought nearly $600 worth of stuff using her credit card number at 11 stores between Seattle and Tacoma.

The Visa bill sits on the front seat of her SUV with the fraud charges circled. It's become a roadmap. Her plan is to visit every store where the fraud took place in search of evidence.

"This is not the way I wanted to learn about Tacoma," says Hill as she negotiates her way around town. She's not out any money. The credit card's underwriter, HAPO Credit Union, is responsible for charges.

"It's not a money thing," says Jackie. "This person stole from me, from the bank and the stores and I don't what them to get away with it."

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that every two seconds, a person's identity is stolen in the United States. The theft often cripples the victim's credit, their career and personal lives.

Identity theft is pervasive and growing at such an alarming rate that law enforcement is forced to triage fraud cases. The cut-off appears to be the ones detectives deem solvable.

"You don't see all these cases being investigated. The police don't have the resources," says Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna.

That's why Hill is doing her own police work.

"My first reaction is how could this happen? I have my card with me," says Hill. She never lost her credit card. She shows it at every store as she searches for clues.

After visiting a Safeway, Fred Meyer and a gas station with no luck, she hits pay dirt at Platinum Wear in Tacoma.

The thief bought a $170 jacket and charged it to Hill's credit card number. Owner Paul Oe not only has a copy of the signed receipt, he's also the one who sold the jacket and remembers the thief. Hill and Oe compare the forged signature to the signature on Hill's driver's license. It doesn't match.

Hill asks if Oe has video of the transaction. He does.

The two go to a back storeroom where Oe reviews the store's surveillance tapes. He finds the transaction and, for the first time, Hill sees her alleged thief.

"Now that I see him, it makes me angry, very angry," says Hill as she watches the video.

The tape shows a man handing over a credit card to Oe. He looks at the card, swipes it through the reader and hands it back to the man. It appears the suspect uses a cloned card - a homemade credit card with Hill's account information embedded on the magnetic strip on the back.

Oe says the credit card worked and the man showed him ID. "I don't know what more I could have done," says Oe.

Stumbling Blocks

Thinking she had her man, she filed a police report with the Tacoma Police Department and told the officer at the front desk that she had video of the thief. That's when she says she got a surprising response.

"I said will 'you guys take it?' and they said 'well no,' " says Hill retelling her story. " 'We'll just put it back in the exhibit room and, to be honest, we probably won't have any time to look at it.' That is what I was told. I was frustrated."

She had done her own detective work and believed she had found her thief.

"At least look at the video. At least give me a fake answer like you care and they didn't," says Hill.

The Tacoma Police department is now looking into her claims.

"There is an internal investigation why she had to go through the extra steps that she did," says Mark Fulghum, spokesman for the Tacoma Police Department.

Initially, her case was deemed by the detectives as "unsolvable" because there was no video that accompanied the police report. Tacoma fraud detectives say they get 175 to 300 fraud cases a day. They have a staff of 12 detectives covering all forms of fraud.

"We do have to filter the cases and if the solvability is close to zero, yes, cases get thrown by the wayside," says Fulghum.

The KOMO Problem Solvers found other video to support Hill's case. Safeway also had surveillance video of what appears to be the same guy buying two $100 Macy's gift cards using Hill's credit card number at its store on East 38th Street in Tacoma. Safeway sent the video to the Tacoma Police Department.

"There's no doubt Jackie helped her own case by doing her own detective work," says Jerry Lerum, the sergeant in charge of Tacoma's fraud unit.

Few Checks at Stores

The stores also have a responsibility to catch the fraud before it occurs.

We took our investigation one step further. We wanted to see if a couple of major chain stores would stop me from using a credit card that doesn't belong to me.

We used one of Hill's other credit cards and went back to same Fred Meyer where the thief had used her credit card number two weeks earlier. The card clearly says "Jacqueline Hill" on the front. She signed her name "Jacqueline Hill" on the back.

At the checkout stand, I tried to swipe Jackie's card at the customer's terminal. The clerk asked if it was debit or credit. I told her credit.

It's corporate policy for each clerk to swipe a customer's credit card through the cashier's terminal and verify its name and signature, says Fred Meyer spokeswoman Melinda Merrill.

In our case, the clerk took Jackie's credit card, swiped it through the cashier's terminal, looked at it and then looked at me. A reasonable person would have asked if I was Jacqueline after seeing the name on the card. She did not.

The clerk handed the card back to me. I signed Jackie Hill's name and was on my way.

"If the clerk did not check the name or the signature, this would be an unacceptable lapse in Fred Meyer's policy," says Merrill.

Hill was not encouraged by the result. "It's frustrating to go back to the same store and then be able to have you use my card and walk away like it's nothing - it's maddening," she said.

We did the same thing at Target. This time, we included wine in our purchase thinking some stores require an ID check when buying alcohol. At no point during our checkout did the Target clerk even ask to see the credit card. The clerk never asked for an identification check.

In a statement, Target says it does not require its clerks to handle or inspect credit cards. Instead the store relies on an electronic authorization system where the customer swipes their own credit card through a reader.

"Electronic authorization is faster and more accurate than relying on visual inspection of verification of written signatures," says Brie Heath of Target.

Still, I was able to use Hill's credit card and walk away without any questions asked.

"I'm surprised how easy it is," says Hill. "Anybody can use anybody's card."