Skip tracing is something that most private investigators do - it simply means locating someone.

There are a number of reasons why clients need us to find individuals. Attorney clients involved in civil litigation often need us to locate people in order to serve parties in lawsuits legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas or orders of examination of judgment debtors. In many cases, the people we find may have skipped town in order to avoid a lawsuit or judgment, which is how the term "skip tracing" got its name.

In other cases, however, people simply want to find other people for very benign reasons, such as locating long lost relatives, friends, schoolmates, etc. Skip tracing is a misnomer when applied to individuals our clients have lost contact with - they haven't "skipped", our clients just don't know where they are.

The Internet has made searches for individuals and companies much easier, but as with all data on the Internet, it needs to be VERIFIED, often by old-fashioned investigative work. There are a number of websites that claim they can find "anyone", but in too many cases, the information supplied is old or incomplete - and you don't get your money back if the information isn't accurate.

Parrent Smith Investigations utilizes all of the publicly available data resources, as well as proprietary databases available to licensed investigators specifically designed for the purpose of locating individuals. We always then follow up on the data acquired with verification of the information we provide to our clients. This is done in many ways, by telephone, in person, contact with neighbors, etc. When we say that we have found someone, they have been found. Period.

In a recent case, we located an adult son who had moved and had not notified his parents of his new address. Although his cell phone was still in service, he refused to answer any of his mother's desperate calls. He was difficult to find because he was staying with a friend and had not rented his own apartment or home, nor did he have any credit in his name. After finding a possible address for him but before we notified the parents that we had found him, we sent an investigator to watch the house at the suspected new address. Only after our investigator had verified that he lived there did we notify the parents. A few days after we gave the parents the address, they flew to the city where the son was found and visited him. It turned out that he had lost his job and was depressed. He was staying with a friend because he didn't have any money and was ashamed that he hadn't found a new job. He was grateful that he was reunited with his parents, and his parents were deeply relieved to have found him.

For a more detailed article on Skip Tracing, please click here