Why don't you ssh in as root, and then type:
su user

I would think that would do it. (I have root disabled for ssh, so I'd have to tweak configs to test it, and I'm late now.. :-)

desiv

When I try to log in, it keeps rejecting the key. When I created the key file I created the authorized_keys file with vi and pasted it that way.

I got it to work! I generated a new key and then used the echo command to put it in the authorized_keys file.