LEWISTON – Her name is Susan Collins. Susan A. Collins, to be specific. She’s not Susan M. Collins, the U.S. senator.

But that doesn’t stop people from finding her name in the phone book, calling her and immediately launching into lengthy diatribes about their problems, from potholes to the legal drinking age.

“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.

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

Her telephone rings three times as much as in 1996, the year 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 estimates 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.

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.

Collins tries to cut the callers off quickly and explain that she’s not that Susan Collins. But that doesn’t always work.

“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.”

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

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

Some calls make Collins sad. The mother who wants to regain custody of her children. The disabled woman who has trouble maneuvering her wheelchair on 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.'”