AURORA, Colo. -- Aurora residents walking their neighborhood found personal medical documents littering the streets this week.

The source of the documents appears to be a medical facility about seven miles away. But how they got there and how many more papers are flittering around residential streets is still a mystery.

One woman thought the trash truck had missed a few items.

It was Wednesday afternoon, around 1 p.m. when she put her empty trash bin back and saw several pieces of paper flying between her yard and the neighbor's place in the 400 block of South Lima Circle.

Once she looked closer, Ms. Bell, who didn't want to use her first name, was horrified.

"Well I was thinking someone should shred this, particularly with Social Security numbers," Bell said.

Names, addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts, Social Security numbers, religious preferences and mortuary information were all included in 11 pieces of paper, all from Agape Healthcare, which provides in-home care to people given six months or less to live.

Agape is based in Greenwood Village and the papers were found near Aurora's Expo Park.

That's a distance of 12.2 miles according to a GPS unit and 7.4 miles as the crow -- or medical record -- flies.

"I think someone was very careless," said Bell, who called Agape on Thursday.

Her neighbor Kevin found two more documents on Thursday and gave them to Bell, the de facto neighborhood document magnet.

Agape's operations director, Amanda Stanley, said it was her worst fear realized. Information for both living and deceased patients had been compromised.

"My first thought was panic," Stanley said. "It's hard to say what happened -- if they actually threw it away and it blew from the trash can or if it blew out of their car. It's a big problem."

Stanley said all of the roughly 60 staff members at Agape are trained to maintain security when handling patient medical records. They toss unwanted copies of medical records into a shred bin that is hauled off by a contractor twice a month.

Permanent files are kept in a locked room, with locked file cabinets.

Among the paperwork found in Aurora is an employee referral bonus memo and a hand-written, time-off request from an Agape staffer.

The investigation is under way.

"Figure out why our paperwork was blowing down the street in Aurora and then take action once we figure out what happened," Stanley said. "There will be discipline for the staff member who's responsible for the paperwork getting out. It could be up to termination, unfortunately."

But at this point, Stanley has not decided if she will call police.

"No. Because I really trust our staff. And I think this was one unfortunate incident," Stanley said.

For identity thieves, the haul was perfect. It's a thought Bell never considered.

"No. Absolutely not. (I'm) from the land of Honest Abe," Bell said. She grew up in southern Illinois.

Violation of federal privacy guidelines for health information (HIPAA) can bring a $10,000 fine for each violation.