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Cross referencing.
As part of today's gig, I was tasked with finding someone. My client's been on a paper cleaning kick the last few weeks, and one item she found was a condolence note for her father's passing from a few decades back. She wanted me to see if I could find the people who sent it.
The note had originally been part of a fruit basket, with the well-wishes typed out by the company, so I didn't have any addresses to go on. But I had a couple of names. The people who'd sent it had names that were remarkably unremarkable - they weren't Steven and Caroline Miller, but close enough to that kind of thing to let me know I wouldn't get anything searching for those two.
However, the card mentioned that one of the people's father was friends with my client's father, and that man had a distinctive enough surname I knew I had something - going from about three million people worldwide to just over five thousand, significantly cutting down the size of the haystack.
From his name, I found his obituary. From his obituary, I found one of his sons. From his son, I was able to narrow things down farther to find Not Steven Miller's Facebook page, where his most recent post from a couple months ago was in celebration of many decades of marriage to Not Caroline. I double-checked him against his former place of business - finding the city he lived in, and making sure it was the same - before I told my client about it and showed her how to message him through Facebook itself.
I won't lie: it was pretty great. Both finding the guy and the work involved.
She asked if I thought if she should apologize for not reaching out sooner. I suggested for her to not say sorry, but rather something about how she was thinking of her father, and thinking about him, and thought to reach out. No apologies, just an open hand of friendship.
The note had originally been part of a fruit basket, with the well-wishes typed out by the company, so I didn't have any addresses to go on. But I had a couple of names. The people who'd sent it had names that were remarkably unremarkable - they weren't Steven and Caroline Miller, but close enough to that kind of thing to let me know I wouldn't get anything searching for those two.
However, the card mentioned that one of the people's father was friends with my client's father, and that man had a distinctive enough surname I knew I had something - going from about three million people worldwide to just over five thousand, significantly cutting down the size of the haystack.
From his name, I found his obituary. From his obituary, I found one of his sons. From his son, I was able to narrow things down farther to find Not Steven Miller's Facebook page, where his most recent post from a couple months ago was in celebration of many decades of marriage to Not Caroline. I double-checked him against his former place of business - finding the city he lived in, and making sure it was the same - before I told my client about it and showed her how to message him through Facebook itself.
I won't lie: it was pretty great. Both finding the guy and the work involved.
She asked if I thought if she should apologize for not reaching out sooner. I suggested for her to not say sorry, but rather something about how she was thinking of her father, and thinking about him, and thought to reach out. No apologies, just an open hand of friendship.
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