Track People Records and Find a Missing Person

It can be a heartbreaking and terrifying experience for the family members when their dear ones go missing especially if it is a little child or an elderly parent. It is vital that you take immediate action on occurrence of such an event. It is mandatory to get in touch with the local law enforcement officials although the filing of a missing person report may not be immediate. The time required for actual filing of the report varies from state to state.

Apart from these, there can be many other reasons why you may need to conduct a lost people search or need to find missing person. The reason can range from locating an old friend or an acquaintance with whom you have lost touch with or a criminal situation or may be that you need to work for a genealogy project.

Irrespective of the reason behind conducting a lost people search, the ways involved to find a missing person have shifted from the traditional means. Except for the cases dealing with foul play the search for missing people or lost persons is totally conducted through online searches instead of the old practice of going through a paper trail.

Ways of Conducting a Lost People Search

The most commonly used methods for conducting a lost people search includes visiting hospitals and places that are a popular haunt of the lost person, checking the news and news bulletins for the lost or missing people for that area, and contacting the local law enforcement officials such as the Sheriff’s department. Popular search engines, social networking sites as well as searching the public records can also help to track people records and find a missing person.

Contacting the Police

Visit the local police department in the event that a family member goes missing. You would need to follow the appropriate procedure to search for the missing person. This is very important because you may not know whether the person is missing due to foul play or any other personal reason. Nonetheless your first step should ideally be to get in touch with the police and file a report for missing person.

Once you file the report the name along with the personal identifiers of the missing person including a recent photograph will be added to the national database of missing persons.An alert will be posted to look for the individual. An ‘Amber Alert’ is given out in case of a missing child which involves the entire community into the search process.  The details of the missing person would then be available with the media and the news wires as well. The essential things you will need to provide to the police include:

• A recent photograph 
• Dentist's information
• A list containing the names as well as the phone numbers of the relatives, friends along with the favorite locations
• Details about what the person was wearing
• Details about any  medical problems and medications used by the individual

General Search

To locate someone such as a friend or an acquaintance that are simply missing from your life, it is a good idea to use a general online search to find a missing person. Visit any of the popular search engines or even the social networking sites. Type in the name and the last known address or the telephone number of the missing person in the search option and click on enter. This is likely to generate a number of results but may not relate to what you are searching. So you need to be patient as you would require spending a lot of time sifting through the results.

Public Records Search

To track people records you can do a public records search. If you have basic information about the missing person such as the name, date of birth, phone number or previous known address of the missing person you can go through the various public records databases.