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Nothing pains us more than to receive a call from a frantic parent saying their child ran away. Such was the case with a young boy eleven years old in Northern California. The parents knew their son made friends and liked to hang around with a male adult who lived close to their home. How the boy met the man was unclear when we commenced the investigation but the parents were absolutely convinced the man was harboring their son. Some of you may not know that law enforcement has no legal right to inspect a home of a person who might allow a child to stay with them unless that person gives them permission to enter their residence. However, if there is reasonable cause to obtain a search warrant the officers will do that. Remember, the parents knew that their child was not abducted and that if he was at the man’s home he went there on his own. In this particular case the police were given permission by the adult male to search his residence and they did not find the child. In fact they went twice to the same residence but on the second visit one of our investigators went inside the residence with the officers. Our investigator is a retired San Francisco Police Detective. Prior to the officers being called to the residence this second time, our investigator interviewed several neighbors who claimed that they had seen the child on a couple of occasions in the complex but they had not seen him enter the residence or leave the residence of the adult suspected of harboring the child. That information was sufficient for us to initiate surveillance on the townhouse complex and our investigator was about 75% certain he had seen the child come out the back door of the townhouse but he did not have a perfect view of the back door. We asked the boy’s parent to call the police again and when officers arrived they were again given permission to enter the townhouse. Just as the officers were about to leave the townhouse our investigator noticed that there was an attic door in the ceiling above the second floor. He asked the officers to look in the attic and behold, the child was there. By law they could not arrest the man for harboring the child and he had no prior criminal record. The child was taken back to his parents who were thrilled to have their son back home. We suggested that the parents seek counseling to learn why the child ran away in the first place. Nice ending. For sure!

We have dedicated ourselves to neutralizing the concerns of our clients for the past twenty one years. Each investigative assignment undertaken by us contains a series of challenges and a continuing education that contributes to our knowledge base. Over these years we have and continue to work with some of the finest lawyers in America all of whom have enhanced our ability to provide legal investigative services with our private investigators that culminate in successful outcomes. Clients seek to retain us when they find themselves in a precarious situation or when they are in a troubled state of mind because they are uninformed. We listen very carefully to the concerns of our clients and then we determine if we want to accept their case. Many people attempt to utilize the services of Private Investigators to gather information they have no legal right to have and should we suspect something is amiss we will refuse their request for our services. Unlike PI’s portrayed in the movies and on TV we don’t sit in dimly lit smoked filled offices. We have a light and bright atmosphere with a great view of the city and we’re not desperately waiting for our next assignment with no regard for what kind of case it is Our Blog was created to enlighten the public as to the reality of what it is like to be a Private Investigator and a Personal Protection Specialist also referred to as a Bodyguard. PROLOGUE The Real World of a Private Investigator We are inviting you into the real world of a private investigator’s life on any given day so you can become familiar with the reality of what it is like to conduct private investigations. Folks ask us all the time what it’s like to be a PI. We hope this blog illustrates that for you. We welcome your comments, suggestions and questions. We receive investigative requests from all over the world. There are times when we nearly fall off our chairs when we’re asked to perform an investigative task that someone saw on a CSI show. TV’s CSI is a very successful and entertaining show and we’re not out to disparage or discourage your viewing of the show. Due to the requests we receive from time to time we thought you should be given some education about what is real and what is fiction. For example; not all of the technologies portrayed on CSI are real they are at times fictitious and they simply do not exist in the real world of Crime Scene Investigations. Some of the other fiction portrayed on CSI is; CSI personnel do not carry weapons they carry the forensic tools of their trade. CSI personnel do not interview suspects, police officers and detectives conduct interviews or interrogations of suspects. CSI personnel collect forensic evidence that they examine under specific guidelines established by the Forensic Science Community and State and Federal Prosecutors. Our staff wishes we could solve our cases within the 35 minutes CSI solve theirs (we subtracted commercial time). Another show we wish we could duplicate is “Criminal Minds.” Yes there is an FBI Division that studies criminal behavior with several Private Investigators. They have become an essential group of experts who have contributed significantly to solving crimes. For those of you who are interested, here is a excerpt from the FBI website regarding profilers; Question: “17. I want to be an FBI “Profiler” – where do I begin the application process? You first need to realize the FBI does not have a job called “Profiler.” The tasks commonly associated with “profiling” are performed by Supervisory Special Agents assigned to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at Quantico, Virginia. Despite popular depictions, these FBI Special Agents don’t get “vibes” or experience “psychic flashes” while walking around fresh crime scenes. It is an exciting world of investigation and research — a world of inductive and deductive reasoning; crime-solving experience; and knowledge of criminal behavior, facts, and statistical probabilities.” What we wouldn’t give to have a “Garcia” from Criminal Minds working for us. She types faster than a speeding bullet and she’s able to find out everything about anyone in less than a minute including the size of their socks LOL. Reality Check time, Garcia is a fictional character who is very entertaining but also a great private investigator. Most of the information she’s asked to find on her computers does not exist in reality. If it did exist we would be nearly a crime free country and we would be living under a totalitarian government and wouldn’t have a strong need for private investigators. Wikipedia describes Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) as a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror. Have you been watching “A Person of Interest” now there is a Private Investigator’s and law enforcement’s dream come true. To know about a crime before it happens and to jump on the investigation before it becomes a crime. My goodness, how delightful. In our world there are no handbooks on how to find a runaway child or catch a cheating spouse or to save an innocent person from going to prison. Here is a case history about one such investigation we conducted that prevented an innocent man from going to prison through the help of our private investigator. The client was an extremely successful businessman in Los Angeles where he had over three hundred employees working for him in a five hundred thousand square foot warehouse. He was in the freight forwarding business. His trucks would pickup goods arriving at the docks in Los Angeles and then transport them to his warehouse for temporary storage. Eventually he