Investigating

My business background is actually in bookkeeping but I have a day job working a receptionist type of job at a college. I also have a second job. I am a licensed Private Investigator and I do people searching, adoption searching, and genealogy & family history research.

I got my P.I. license in March of 2010 after I spent about 15 years searching for my own birthfamily and my siblings (more on my own adoption and search story coming in a future post). I did find my family, and along the way I learned quite a bit about how the search process works. It just came natural for me to reach out and try to help people in their searching when I could. I have spent years helping others search for lost family and loved ones, and also helping people to build their family trees.

In 2005 I started moderating several message boards for Ancestry.com  and I now moderate 16 of their message boards.

In 2006, I found Genealogy Trails, which is a website dedicated to putting free genealogy and family history info online for everyone to share. Since my birthfamily came from the St Charles Missouri area (just a few miles northwest of St Louis), I became interested in that particular area. For over 5 years I have been the host of the St Charles County Genealogy Trails page.

Over the years, I have also helped with transcribing documents for the Missouri Digital Heritage website,

I have spent 3 hours a week volunteering at my local history museum in their archives department,
I just love this place!

 There are so many other things I have become involved with since I entered the genealogy world, those things are really just the tip of the iceberg.

At some point several years ago, I decided to turn my hobby into a career. I'm not yet at a point where I can quit my day job but I'm getting closer to being able to do just that.

Right now I have 3 clients. They all happen to be adoption searches, allthough my business is not limited to just adoption searching.

At this time I'm not planning on taking on any more clients. The three cases I am working on seem to be plenty to juggle without confusing myself. All three of the cases I am working on right now are in beginning stages but as soon as I get close to solving one, I will look for a new client to fill the spot.

I really enjoy this type of work, and I'm pretty good at it (if I do say so myself!!)

I am really hoping to be able to quit my day job at the college and be a detective full time.

 Sorry for the yellow picture (again!) My detective skills are good, my photography skills are NOT! Eventually I will find the time to take a photography class.