People Search Guru Strikes Again

I live to find people. Somehow new opportunities to find people seem to find me all the time. Case in point: my stepdad and his family. His son from a previous marriage has never wanted a relationship with his father, although one would be hard-pressed to find a nicer man than my stepfather. Yet, the boy has always remained loyal to his mother, who is not a very nice woman, to say the least. In the recent years my stepbrother has completely severed any and all ties not only with his father, but also with his grandparents - the father's parents - who practically raised him.

It's been years since anyone has heard from the lad, but everyone continues to wonder about him in the back of their minds. My stepfather's parents have been getting very old and frail of late, always in and out of the hospital, and their only wish was to see their grandson and make sure he is okay. Grandma often cries reminiscing about her beloved boy. That's when my mom asked me if I can search for him.

I gotta say, in my family I am revered as something of a people search guru. I have helped family and friends to find people with whom they've been close once but lost touch with for one reason or another. They think I am a detective genius of some kind, but they don't know how quick, easy and cheap it is to find people from just about anywhere in the United States. All you do is enter the person's name and the state in which (you hope) he is still living. The thing is, even if he had moved, his present address can be determined based on his previous contact information.

There he was right away: where he lives now and his current phone number. You will find people with the same name out there, lots of them, but you can tell when it's the right person: his date of birth fits, names of relatives, slightly peculiar spelling of a popular last name - it's him! I called my mom and gave her the information. She later told me grandma cried tears of eternal gratitude to me. That's what makes it all worth it; not the gratitude, but the joy and hope people feel when they get news of their loved ones.

The last I heard from my mom is they had a cousin, who used to be close to the boy growing up, give him a call. She chewed him out for abandoning his elderly grandparents and now he is apparently coming for a visit, with a fiance on his arm, of all things. I hear he asked if his father could possibly forgive him and if he would like to see him as well. Well! This is shaping up to be an honest-to-goodness family reunion of monumental proportions. I gotta be there!