Meet Stephanie Smith. She's a fitness guru who just earned her certificate as a personal trainer.

"Physical fitness has been part of my life for years," Smith said.

With years of experience educating people on how to get in shape, Smith was recently offered a job as a personal trainer by a nationally known health club.

She was excited. But first the health club wanted to do a criminal background check on her.

"My thought was OK, I filled out background checks before so I thought no problem," she said.

The health club hired a company called ChoicePoint to perform the background check.

But ChoicePoint found some disturbing information -- information that kept the health club from hiring Smith.

"Well, first they said, 'Something was wrong with your background check,'" she said. "I said, 'What is wrong with it? What is wrong with my background check?'"

ChoicePoint found out that Smith was convicted of identity theft 10 years ago and sentenced to three years' probation.

The problem? It wasn't the correct Smith. So she contacted me.

I pulled the all the records from West Mesa Justice Court. And although the defendant in the case had the same name, the social security number was different, the date of birth wasn't the same and the defendant's race was listed as African-American.

This Smith is white. I forwarded my findings to ChoicePoint and they sent me a letter stating, "ChoicePoint today verified that the conviction cited in our original report does not belong to Stephanie Smith. The report is being revised today to remove the findings ..."

That's good news to Smith, who said she couldn't have done it without 3 On Your Side.

"Well, I'm very happy we can put a resolution to this," she said. "I'm just sad it can happen to anybody. I'm not the only Smith or Jones. There are a lot of common names out there."

ChoicePoint says it will also contact the health club about the mix up and let them know they goofed.

After that, Smith will hopefully get the job she wanted. And the job she deserves.