All of us have been helped at one time or another by someone who we never really thanked. It might have been a neighbor, a teacher or even a stranger, but whoever they were, we never got to fully express our gratitude.
With Thanksgiving nearly here, wouldn't this be the perfect time to find that good samaritan and tell them how you feel? Just follow these steps until you find who you're looking for. As with all searches, persistence is the key to success.
First, gather all the information you know about this person, such as their full name, place of employment, skills, hobbies or age. Any of these might be the clue that leads you to them.
Next, go to ZoomInfo, a search engine that specializes in finding people.
Try different versions of the name you seek. Examples: Robert Good Samaritan, Rob G. Samaritan, Bob Samaritan, etc.
No luck? Try InfoSpace. If you don't know the city or state, leave those fields as is.
If you know what company your samaritan works for, look up the company's locations. For example, use a search engine to find "Sears locations". Are any of these close to an address in the InfoSpace results? While you're at it, see if the company has an employee directory online.
Try typing in the samaritan's name as a uRL. For example: www.suzysuz.com
There are a number of "people finder" services that require registration and/or payment. Some of these give you a preview of the data they can dig up, but the preview itself may have what you need. For a given name, PeopleFinders will show you a list of matches with age, city, state and close family members, so that you can figure out which listing belongs to the person you're looking for.
US Search provides previews with name, age, city and state going back 20 years, which means people may be listed multiple times. They also give preview results at the bottom from Reunion.com.
Reunion.com requires registration, but is free. You can find contact information for over 35 million people and see if anyone's used their service to search for you. Be aware that you'll have to enter your own contact information into their database.
MaidenName.net is a similar service, but specializes in tracking down a person who no longer goes by their maiden name. The same warnings apply.
By the way, don't spend a penny on a paid service until you read 'The Best People Finders Are Free'. It will also give you more search tips.
Here's a place we hope you don't find your samaritan... RootsWeb's Social Security Death Index. Still, you'll know not to search further. Be sure to use the right search form. The first one may be an ad. Only the last name is required to search.
If you still haven't found your samaritan, don't give up. Remember, persistence is the key. Go to both Google and Mamma.com and type in their name surrounded by quotes.
Chances are that you'll have a lot of search results to go through. You might want to start a list to sort out all of the people with the same name. For example, THIS one lives in Australia, is 23 and is a tennis pro. THAT one lives in Wisconsin and is an urban architect. If neither of these is your samaritan, you can probably ignore all results having to do with tennis or architecture.
In fact, you can narrow your search using this knowledge. Just tell the search engine that you don't want results with those words. For example:
"Suzy Suz" -tennis -architecture
Lastly, SearchSystems.net is the largest free public records directory on the web. It's a one-stop shop for looking for people by marriage, property ownership and more.
