Identity Theft

I just found out that a friend of mine just had her purse stolen.  She accidentally left her purse in her car and left her car unlocked while she ran into the store.  When she realized that she'd forgotten her purse, she ran back out to the car to grab it and it was already gone.  Her money, credit cards, driver's license and everything else is gone with it.  How scary is that?  I know that credit cards can be cancelled but with the threat of identity theft these days, it's very scary!  It not only ruins your day because your posessions have been stolen and you have to make a million calls to stop everything, you also have to be concerned about your indentity and even your credit score!  I don't know very much about what it takes to steal someone's identity but I've heard about what happens when someone does.  An old co-worker of mine used one of those free credit score sites to find out where her score was at and eventually found out that her credit was shot because someone had stolen her identity.  It's a very scary situation and it's taken her a long time to try to get her life back the way it was before.  I'm hoping my friend doesn't have to go through what my former co-worker did!