DIG was asked to help find a mentally ill man who had gone missing after leaving a state facility. The man had run out of his medication and gone to the local police department asking them to help him with a bed and a way to refill his prescriptions. Because all shelters were full at that time, the police sent the man to a state facility over an hour away. The last time the man’s mother had heard from him was the day he left the facility, and she stated he was so drugged up he could barely talk. The parents didn’t hear from him after that, there was no activity on his bank account, or response to phone calls, so they became concerned. Law enforcement told them he had purchased a bus ticket back to his home town, but had gotten off the bus halfway there at a truck rest stop, and there was nothing more they could do. DIG offered suggestions on where to look beyond that point and to call various people with whom he might have contacted. DIG offered the parents insight into law enforcement’s process for missing persons and encouragement to keep pursuing all avenues, but explained that because their son was an adult, it would be up to him to let them know where he was. Eventually, they were told by the police that their son was alive, though no other details. After some time, their son did reach out to his parents and let them know he was alive and doing okay.
In another case, our client wanted DIG to find a picture of a potential son. The story given was that a guy and a gal were dating in high school, they broke up because the gal was seeing another guy, whom she eventually married. She had a son shortly after the marriage. Years later, our client’s grandmother saw the gal with a little boy in a grocery store and thought he looked exactly like her son, our client. DIG scoured social media and found a photo of the boy, posted by his mother with his name. Further research found photos of the boy as a grown man, who looked nothing at all like our client. DIG cautioned that the only real way to determine if this man was our client’s son was to do DNA testing and/or contact the mother and ask.
