I never had a need to use a People Search Engine until my grandmother passed away earlier this year. In her will she had specific instructions as to who would inherit what. My Uncle Bobby got the car, I got the waffle maker (Thanks, Gran!), and my Aunt Dora would get her childhood dollhouse. Sounds all well and good, right? Except for the fact that our entire extended family lost touch with Aunt Dora ages ago.
Yes, it had been a messy family affair, full of cruel things we all regret having said. But all the same, Dora had moved, changed her phone number, and hadn’t gotten in contact with any of us to give an update. And now we had a beautiful, antique dollhouse we needed to deliver to her per our grandmother’s wishes.
My father and Uncle Bobby had already given up hope and asked me if I could sell the thing on eBay. I told them that before I did that, I wanted to do a people search, just in case, to see if I could track Aunt Dora down.
In fact, it was much easier than any of us had expected. We just typed in her name and birthdate - and sure enough, she came up! She’s married, so she had changed her name, but the people search engine managed to catch that too. We found her new address, phone number and email address in a matter of minutes.
We sent her an email, and the rest - as they say - is history. There was a big teary-eyed reunion. A lot of apologies and a lot more “Don’t worry about it.” And in the end, it reunited our family, and Dora got the dollhouse just like we’d promised my grandmother she would.