Credit union shreds sensitive documents, collects for food bank

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake branch of Solarity Credit Union held a paper-shredding event Saturday.

“We’re encouraging everybody to bring any of their documents that they don’t want lying around, that you don’t want anybody to get their hands on,” said Solarity Community Activation Activist Sean McEwen. 

People took up the offer at a fairly steady rate, McEwen said, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Anybody who wanted to, Solarity members or not, could bring up to three boxes of documents to be shredded at no charge, and if they brought a nonperishable food item for the Moses Lake Food Bank, they could bring an additional box. The documents were loaded into a secure CI Information Management truck to be carted away and destroyed.

Identity theft cost Americans more than $185 million last year, according to an FBI report. Documents with bank account numbers, credit card or loan offers, birth dates and Social Security numbers can pile up quickly and, if they’re put outside in a garbage or recycling bin, make easy pickings for identity thieves. 

“You don’t want to throw a lot of this stuff in the trash,” McEwen said. CI Information Management is the same company the credit union uses for its own secure document disposal, he said.

Some people came with donations anyway, McEwen said, even without documents to be shredded.

“It’s one of the things we love about Moses Lake,” McEwen said. “Everybody’s here to step up and help their neighbors.”

Solarity Credit Union, based in Yakima, opened its Moses Lake branch last October, according to Columbia Basin Herald archives. Shredding events were a regular thing with Solarity until a few years ago, McEwen said, and the credit union is bringing them back because the need is great.

“There’s so much fraud going on out there, and we want to do everything we can to help the community fight those scams,” he said. “This is a step that we can take to reach outside the walls of our credit union.”

    Orange-shirted Solarity Credit Union employees collect donations for the Moses Lake Food Bank Saturday morning at the credit union’s document-shredding event.