A former city employee who admitted she faked a battle with breast cancer and used more than 194 days of fellow employees’ donated time to cope with the disease is being investigated by the Chattanooga Police Department.

Keele Maynor, 37, abruptly quit her position as an administrative assistant with the Department of Land Use Development on Dec. 12, saying in her resignation letter made available by the city that she had been “untruthful” with city employees.

In an e-mail to her supervisor obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Ms. Maynor said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and was cleared after radiation in 2001. She said she started fabricating the story in 2003 “and it has snowballed and finally came to a head,” according to the e-mail.

Ms. Maynor also told her supervisor that she is seeing a therapist, according to the e-mail.

“I am relieved for two reasons. I don’t have to keep up the charade any more and I am finally getting some help to figure out why I did this in the first place,” she said in the e-mail.

No one answered the door at Ms. Maynor’s Hixson apartment Thursday afternoon.

Officials in Marietta, Ga., confirmed that Ms. Maynor graduated from Marietta High School in 1989. According to her post on classmates.com, Ms. Maynor is divorced with two sons and a daughter.

Ms. Maynor used her allotted 31 hours for holidays, vacation and sick time each year since she was hired in 2002, said city spokesman Richard Beeland. When those were gone, fellow employees donated 1,554.28 hours to her since August 2003, he said.

Ms. Maynor was paid her hourly wage for each of those hours, Mr. Beeland said. For the most recent fiscal year, Ms. Maynor was making $23,968.58, he said.

The city is continuing an internal investigation into the matter, Mr. Beeland said.

Chattanooga police also are in the early stages of an investigation, said Sgt. Mike Minnick in the fraud division.

Breast cancer survivors said they were saddened rather than angry to learn about the incident.

Friends said Ms. Maynor wrote a blog detailing her experiences and even shaved her head.

“She had all of us fooled,” said Jackie Stephenson, a breast cancer survivor. “I don’t think there was one survivor there that didn’t believe she hadn’t been through everything she said she had been through.”

Local assistance organizations are reviewing records to see what benefits or support Ms. Maynor received from them. To try to confirm whether she was a legitimate cancer patient, some organizations’ officials called Hospice of Chattanooga after Ms. Maynor said she received hospice care.

“She is not currently a patient,” said Chief Executive Officer Ben Johnston. “She has never been a patient.”

Rachel Houghton, executive director of the Helen Distefano Fund, a nonprofit agency that assists about 60 cancer patients and their families a year, said the organization had helped Ms. Maynor, but cut off its aid upon learning that she was not one.

The fund had been helping her for about seven years, Ms. Houghton said.

Though the organization did not give Ms. Maynor any money, Ms. Houghton said it helped pay her utilities. She declined to disclose the dollar amount of that assistance.

To qualify for assistance from the Distefano fund, Ms. Maynor submitted the required documentation of eligibility, including a signed letter from an oncologist, tax records and proof of dependent children in the home, Ms. Houghton said. Ms. Houghton declined to specify whether the letter from the oncologist was legitimate.

The Breast Cancer Network of Strength, an organization with which Ms. Maynor was affiliated, was notified by Memorial Hospital that someone was participating in programs and activities who was not being treated for breast cancer at Memorial, Lynda LeVan, director of the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, said earlier this week.

“This news came as a surprise to our organization, whose mission is to ensure, through information, empowerment and peer support that no one faces breast cancer alone,” she said in a statement.

Memorial spokeswoman Karen Sloan declined to specify whether Ms. Maynor ever had been a patient at the hospital, citing the privacy concerns under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.