A story of finding a lost child.
A day before Memorial Day we received a call from a father of a missing child. The father explained that his son hadn’t be heard from in over 48 hours and he asked if we would help find. He told us that his son was 18 years old and that he lived alone in Santa Monica, California with no relatives, girlfriend or friends the father could call upon. The young man’s father told us that he had tried calling his son’s cell phone but it constantly went to voicemail. Within 48 hours we located his son through the use of very proprietary and sophisticated technology.
The young man was located just on the outskirts of San Diego, California which is nearly a two and a half hours drive from Santa Monica. San Diego is very close to the Mexican border and we were concerned that if he went into Mexico he might be kidnapped.
There was no way we could make it to San Diego either by plane or car in time to place his location in at the motel under surveillance. We reached out to our associates in San Diego and explained the situation. We asked them to assign someone they trusted to commence an immediate surveillance of the young man. They had one of their private investigators on site within the hour and as we drove to San Diego, we were in constant contact with the private investigator who was maintaining the surveillance for us until we arrived. By the time we pulled into the parking lot of the motel where the young man was staying he had just pulled into a space in front of one the guest rooms.
The only way to handle this situation was to simply walk up to the young man and identify ourselves. Since he was over eighteen years old and considered an adult we could not force him to come with us. He had to want us to help him and he had to want to return home to his parents. We explained we were retained to find him by his father and that we were not going to abduct him. We further explained that he had an option to speak with us or not to speak to us. The young man was clearly shocked we found him and he was also very depressed and lonely. We consoled him and explained to him how frightened his family was and how much they loved him and wanted to speak with him. He agreed to speak only with his sister at first and later on with his mother and father. His mother flew out from Ft. Lee, Florida the following day while we maintained a twenty-four hour surveillance of him outside of his room. When we asked the young man what he would like to do while we waited for his mother to arrive, he replied that he had planned on going to the San Diego Zoo. We took him there and he had a wonderful time.
The reason he chose to disappear was because he had dropped out of college due to unsatisfactory grades and he had not told his parents who were supporting him while thinking he was still enrolled in college. He felt guilty and unworthy but in our view he was worthy and a fine young man who really needed then to be with his family back home. He departed San Diego with his mother being a great deal happier than when we located him. Great ending to a terrific successful private investigation by Worldwide Intelligence Network.