I remember the first pretext I ever did.
I was working for an investigative agency, and it was my first day as a skip tracer.
Originally, I was doing undercover work in retail stores catching employees who were stealing. The work was a breeze, but when I heard another investigator skip tracing, it struck a nerve.
For some odd reason, I wanted to trace people.
The company I worked for did general investigations, but the skip tracing department — me — primarily did work for other investigators.
You can read more about that part of my career on my I Was a Skip Tracer page.
My First Skip Trace
The first trace of my life came in from a private investigator.
It was a New York telephone number.
I looked in the Rolodex and found the CNA bureau for New York Telephone.
CNA: Customer Name and Address
To this day, more than forty years later, I still remember the phone number and code.
I dialed.
They answered.
“Hi, Pat Brown, code EC602, phone number X.”
Within a few minutes, they read out the name and city.
I hung up and felt like I had won over the world.
But that was only the first half.
I Still Needed the Address
I needed the address, so I called directory assistance.
The person had a listed number and address.
But information is only information until proven otherwise.
I could not send an investigator to the address without confirming the target was still there.
I dialed the number.
Someone answered.
“Hi, this is Eddie Davis from X Shipping Company and…”
I told them I had a water-damaged package.
I read out their address, but gave them the incorrect house number.
If they corrected me, I knew I had the right information and it was good enough to give to the client.
The Hunt Was the Rush
Skip tracing excited me.
There was a hunt and a rush to it.
I knew my days were numbered at the investigative agency.
I would go on my own.
I did not want to be a private eye sitting in a car surveilling people.
I wanted to locate people.
I wanted to locate information.
I wanted to stay behind the scenes, of sorts.
That work eventually became the foundation of my privacy and disappearance work.
Years later, I reversed what I had learned as a skip tracer and began helping people become harder to find.
You can read more about that on my How to Disappear page.
I also wrote about those years in I Was a Skip Tracer.