June 23, 2004 :: Cold Case

Five years ago this Sunday, my brother had his 40th birthday party down in south Florida where he lives. Down on the beach I met a friend and kept in contact with her for maybe three years, after which time we lost contact with each other when I took my epic 3 month vacation and moved to the east coast. I'm headed back to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow for the weekend, and a few days ago I thought I would try to re-establish contact with her.

I started with the information I had — last known address, a home and a cell number that had both been disconnected for a couple of years, and a social security number. None of the free resources I could find online were of any help. I knew that, in the past, she had spent a good deal of effort moving around and hiding from an abusive ex-boyfriend, so she deliberately made herself hard to find. Never listed in any phone book, most of her stuff was never in her name. This was proving to be a challenge.

My next thoughts were of an acquaintance of mine back in California. She works in the PacBell billing department, and can find pretty much anyone who's ever had a telephone in the state of California. Unfortunately, my friend doesn't live in California anymore, so that avenue was dead, but it got me to thinking about alternative resources, or social engineering. I figure, I know enough people who work in government facilities with access to secret databases that someone ought to be able to find her.

Again, all my leads came up empty. I started asking some of my more resourceful friends what they would do, and almost all of them came up with the same answer: pay for an Internet people search. I resisted, because it seemed like cheating, and because I really didn't want to spend any money on this quest. But when everything else failed, I broke down and spent the $39.95.

After 24 hours, the internet search came back with a flurry of information. Aliases, former and currrent addresses, telephone numbers associated with those addresses, names associated with those telephone numbers, dates of issue of social security numbers, possible relatives, phone numbers and addresses of possible relatives. I started weeding through the information, trying to eliminate what wasn't useful. Of the addresses, three were listed as current or active in the last two months. One was the address I had, and along with another address, both turned out to be corporate housing facilities. These were clearly way-stations in the escape from the ex. The third address had some man's name associated with it, but I decided it was worth the risk and called.

A woman answered the phone. I told her I was looking for my friend, and she said, "I know her, but she's no longer here. Who are you?" in a somewhat suspicious tone. I replied that I was her friend from California (because that's where I lived when she contacted me last) and that I was looking for her. Ever suspicious, she took my name and number and said she'd try to get it to my friend.

After getting off the phone and putting two and two together (and scanning some other info on the report), I concluded that the person I spoke to was her mother, and the name listed on that phone was her father. Hopefully she'll get the message and call me before I head down there on the plane tomorrow evening; it would be nice to see her again.

Several of my friends have asked why I was so pressed to find her. "Who is she to you?" "Why is she so important to you?" "She must have been fine or something." Well.... she IS fine, but that's not why I was pressed. I came to realize after a certain point that my singlemindedness in the quest was more about the quest itself than about finding her. I wanted to be able to say I had successfully found someone who'd been hiding and out of touch for a couple of years, with a little sleuthing, to add the "finds missing persons" capability notch to my belt. At this point, there's not much more I can do except hope she gets the message, but I feel like I was at least partially successful.

posted by Rainmayun at 11:36 AM -