Zoe finished in the Top 20 percent of her high school class.

A freshman psychology major at Jamestown Community College, where she attends tuition-free, she’s one of the millions of college students handling a transition to online classes since the outbreak of COVID-19.

And, like roughly six percent of Chautauqua County residents, she is currently out of work.

A part-time hostess at GameTime Bar & Grill, Zoe stopped working on March 15, filing for unemployment a week later and claiming her earnings each week on deadline.

“It’s been over a month and I haven’t really received anything yet,” she told The Post-Journal, noting that a check for $600 did appear in her mail on April 24.

The check — postmarked on April 2 — also included additional unemployment forms. Zoe originally didn’t think anything of them, but when a family member was helping to explain the forms to her later that evening, a quick turn to the fourth page signaled that a mistake had been made.

“When I opened it, the first three papers were my information — my name, my social security number, my address,” she said. “But then, the paper that I was supposed to use to look at my quarterly earnings was not my paper but in fact another young woman’s paper from Elma, New York — her name, her address, her social security number and where she worked.”

She wasn’t alone.

A report by WKBW in Buffalo reported several others across Western New York who had fallen victim to a security breach the Governor’s office has since referred to as a “human error.”

Deanna Cohen, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Labor, explained how the breach happened in an email statement to The Post-Journal.

“The impacted mailing was batched over four days, so folks may see letters dated ‘3/31,’ ‘4/2,’ ‘4/8,’ and ‘4/21,'” Cohen said. “We identified the faulty machine and took it out of service. We tested our other mailing machines to ensure there are not similar issues. Once again — remember — we’re talking about a mechanical error in a mail sorting machine, not a malicious action.”

“At first, I didn’t think it was anything big,” Zoe said. “I just assumed maybe they switched our papers.”

As Zoe and her family did more investigating, it turned out it wasn’t that easy.

“I reached the girl whose paper I had and asked if our papers had been switched,” Zoe added. “She told me she did not receive any papers at all, so she didn’t even have mine. Then, I told her that I was just going to hold on to her paper. I don’t want to send it out, because if that got lost, then it’s my problem now. I just wanted to wait for the state’s instructions.”

Still, Zoe’s calls to local government offices proved unsuccessful in obtaining answers and several days went by before guidance finally came.

“My mom and I have tried several different numbers from unemployment,” she said. “We could not get in touch, but after a few days, we did get in contact with the unemployment office in a very weird way.”

Zoe’s family came across further investigation by WBKW’s Nikki DeMentri that revealed the state’s error had affected more than the projected three dozen people the Governor’s office had originally reported last week.

“The state was reporting that they had gotten in touch with everyone this had affected,” Zoe said. “But, I was one of the people who had been affected and we had never gotten a call. So, we called the news station and got in contact with one of the writers and she said that several other people had called them with the same exact problem as me, saying they were never in contact.”

On Friday, Zoe finally received a call.

“They just offered me a year of protection and monitoring my social security number,” she said, acknowledging her frustration.”I’m not sure what that will do … If someone knows my number, then just a year later they can do something with it.”

“Out of an abundance of caution and care for our fellow New Yorkers, we are offering free credit monitoring and identity theft surveillance to everyone who was included in this mailing, regardless of if they were affected or not,” Cohen said in her statement on Tuesday. “We are proactively reaching out to these individuals by email or phone, explaining how to sign up for the monitoring services, and providing them with a specific point of contact at (Department of Labor) for related questions.”

As of Monday, however, Zoe still wasn’t sure who had received her private information and had still not received any additional unemployment compensation, though the state did alert her that her claims had been moved to a mandatory list.

“I haven’t seen any changes on my claim and have been logging into the website,” she said. “I imagine that takes a while though.”

And while Zoe admits she’s one of the “lucky ones,” due to her academic success resulting in an opportunity to attend college tuition-free, the unresolved question of who has access to her personal information still looms.

“It definitely sucks,” Zoe added. “Difficulties in paying for school hasn’t been a problem, but it has been hard focusing on both studies and trying to sort this out and constantly being worried about if someone has my social security number.”

“It just really sucks not knowing who was responsible for a big mistake and how this could happen,” she added.