Real Private Investigators helping you take care of your real problems yourself!
The Do It Yourself Detective
Getting Started
Like all things in life, your search has a beginning and an end. Searching for someone is like putting together a large picture puzzle. The more pieces you put together, the better you see the picture.
The beginning of your search is like the beginning of the puzzle. You first identify the pieces you can and connect them to see where to look next. Putting the picture puzzle together takes time and patience and so does putting your personal puzzle together.
The first pieces you'll need are the name of the person you want to locate. The full name is best, especially if it's a fairly common one. So, full first, middle and last name with proper spelling. For a woman the middle or maiden name is critical. Your next important piece of the puzzle would be the date of birth.
There are basic searches that can begin with this much information and you might get lucky with just the name and date of birth, but once again the more pieces of the puzzle when you start the better it is.
Let me remind you again that you want to find every bit of information you can before you start calling or searching the internet. Close relatives, sisters, brothers, parents and former employees are all very good potential sources of information and assistance. If you have any idea of professional training, this can be of great assistance when searching, due to people's tendency to remain within their profession.
Some particularly difficult cases involve infants adopted at birth or an early age, due to confidentiality agreements and name changes. Also difficult are searches for women who change their names due to marriage.
Criminals can be very difficult to find because they obviously don't want to be brought to justice. Another person who may be hard to locate is the person who is hiding from bill collectors.
Almost every bit of information that exists about people has a social security number attached to it. Even early filing systems that were set up prior to the SSN being used as an identifier can now be accessed if you have an individual's social security number. Military records are just one such system. More about the military later.
Hopefully, you have the full name, date of birth and social security number of your person. If you also have the last known address you've just increased your chances of finding them dramatically.
