LEWISTON – The man was screaming so loud that Susan Collins could still hear him after she moved the phone a couple of feet away from her ear.

He was mad because he had driven over a big pothole in the middle of the road, and his new car was thrown out of alignment.

He insisted that the state should pay for the damage. And he wanted the senator to send him a check.

Days later, Collins got another call from a local teen. He demanded to know why he was old enough to join the military but too young to drink beer.

He insisted that the legal drinking age should be lowered. And he wanted the senator to do something about it.

Collins tried to stop both the man and the teen. But they didn’t give her a chance.

It was only after they finished their entire spiel that she was able to break the news: “You have the wrong person. This is Susan Collins, but I am not the senator. I am Susan A. Collins. She is Susan M. Collins.”

Susan A. Collins is a 56-year-old former nurse’s aide who lives with her boyfriend in a small house on Spring Street in Lewiston.

The telephone that sits on a ledge beside her bed started ringing three times as much in 1996. That was the year that Susan M. Collins joined the U.S. Senate and set up an office in Lewiston.

The two women’s phone numbers are listed next to each other in the local phone book. Susan M. Collins is identified as the senator.

“But people obviously aren’t looking close enough,” Collins said. “Or they call information, and the operator is not doing her job.”

A tall woman with long, dark hair and a loud, scratchy voice, Collins estimated that she gets five to seven calls a day for the senator.

Unless it is election time. Then the calls double.

They call early in the morning. They call in the middle of the night. They call to complain about the trash in their neighborhood. They call to express their opinion about the death penalty, abortion, and, most recently, the proposal to build a casino in Maine.

Name change

Collins tried to change the listing in the phone book to S. Collins and Sue Collins. But the calls kept coming, so she eventually changed it back.

After several people told her that they got the number from information, she called 411 and asked the operator to send a reminder to her co-workers that there are two listings for women named Susan Collins in Lewiston.

One has “senator” by her name. One doesn’t.

Collins also considered removing her name from the phone book, but the the phone company charges a fee to have an unlisted number. Additionally, Collins wants old friends to be able to look her up.

“I’m not changing my name just because she’s in office,” she said.

‘A liar’

Some calls last less than a minute.

“A lot of them just say, ‘Is this Susan Collins?’ And I’ll say, ‘This is Susan Collins. But I’m not the senator,'” Collins said.

The calm ones apologize and hang up. Others insist that she is lying and they keep going.

“Some people have actually called me a liar,” Collins said.

A veteran from Mechanic Falls who called to complain about Medicare refused to let her speak.

“Would you believe the phone call went on for a half-hour before I finally gave up and hung up,” Collins said. “You really don’t want to hear the vulgar stuff I’ve been called.”

Those type of calls put Collins in a bad mood. Others make her sad.

The mother who wants to regain custody of her children. The disabled woman who has trouble maneuvering her wheelchair on the crooked sidewalks. The son whose mother fell and broke her hip at an understaffed nursing home.

“If they are decent, I sit and listen to their problems,” Collins said. “But I always tell them, ‘There is nothing I can do. I’m not at the head. I’m at the lower part of the scale with you. I’m only Susan Collins.”

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