Florida’s Private Investigators – Locating a Hero
As stated in yesterday’s blog, we as Private Investigators in Florida receive many strange requests. Some make me laugh and some make me just scratch my head and say “what the ???”
Today, I’m going to tell the story of the inquiry into locating a gravesite. It all started with an email that was sent to a colleague in Miami. It was around Halloween time and he thought it would be fun to forward the request over to my agency.
The request was from a man trying to locate a long lost friend that disappeared 30 years prior and was feared dead. He served with him in Vietnam but only had a part of the person’s first name. We deemed it a skip tracing case and started with a background investigation into the person. Possible addresses for the person were located in Fort Lauderdale and Tampa. After obtaining some information, we searched the following databases:
- Social Security Death Index
- US Dept. of Veterans Affairs – National Gravesite Locator
- Find a grave – This site has famous and non famous gravesites.
We obtained a break in the case by visiting the library in Fort Lauderdale. Yes, the library. Using his name and possible location from early 80’s, research was conducted within the periodicals. An article was discovered about the man from 1983. [A photo revealed that it was our “missing person.”] The article involved an apartment fire in which the man risked his life to save another. He was deemed a hero for saving a woman’s life. After bringing her to safety, he went back into the building to locate her dog. He was unaware that the dog was already outside. While inside, the smoke inhalation was too much and he passed out and died.
An obituary was located and the gravesite was listed. To this day, our client continues to visit the grave of his friend.
We as Private Investigators use a variety of sources to locate a missing person. If you are in need of services, contact a professional investigator.