life

By MARGARET MOSES
Staff Writer

Have you lost touch with someone you were once close to? Does someone owe you money and you can't locate him? Or is there someone you need to find but aren't sure where to start?
   Joseph Culligan believes with some tenacity and ingenuity you can locate whomever it might be.
   "By the time I get a case, usually it's been worked to death, or it is a news case and is a breaking story," said Culligan, author of "You Can Find Anybody" (Jodere Group, $29.95) during a recent phone interview from his Miami office. " I have to find something that no one else knows."
   What the licensed private investigator finds is often right under everyone else's nose - if they only knew where to start sniffing.
   It helped him when he needed to locate Monica Lewinsky's phone number when she was holed up in Washington, D.C. And it has helped him countless times when he has reunited family members.
   It was a reunion case which Culligan classifies as one of his most fascinating cases ever. He was working with a woman to locate the daughter she had given up for adoption years before.
   "The woman was 45 years old, and when she was only 15, she had given up a daughter. She worked in a convenience store in West Virginia and told me that the one thing that kept her going was she worked with a young woman who had three children. The woman was probably around the age of the daughter she had given up," Culligan said.
   What Culligan found astounded the woman and the TV audience when the show aired a decade ago on "Sally Jesse Raphael."
   "Here she had worked with her own daughter for 11 years. It turned out the girl she worked with had never been 

told she was adopted," he said. "Thirty years ago people didn't adopt children and go to California for them. They weren't transcontinental. They adopted locally."
   The techniques Culligan used to find the young woman, and the ones he advocates others use for themselves, are found in "You Can Find Anybody!" He said he wrote the book to share the information he has culled over the years because he wants people to know the steps they can take to locate the people they need to.
   "That's always been my hallmark. I don't hold back stuff," he said. "I'm trying to enhance the private investigator image that has been soiled by so many people and TV shows."
   What he shares in the book are step-by-step directions to help you track down the people you need to find. He shares how to access birth records, death records, motor vehicle registrations, cemetery records, bankruptcy records and Social Security numbers - all with simple letters to the appropriate agency and a few dollars in fees. Armed with that information, you can broaden your search once you have a birth date, Social Security number and often a current address.
   "Everything I do is legal. Everybody thinks it's not, but I can't get away with anything. When we found Monica Lewinsky's phone number, she would have slammed us if we paid someone off at the phone company to get the information," he 

said. "If you use illegal methods, you are going to get caught - if not today, then tomorrow."
   So how did he find Lewinsky's phone number? He used police records, which are public information. He checked to see if she had a burglar alarm registered, and when he found that she did, her home phone number was listed on the registration.
   Culligan said some people scoff at the use of public records and question how much good they are. However, the information gleaned from them can lead you right to the one you are looking for.
   In his experience, the people looking for someone are most often: finding their first love, looking for birth parents or tracking down someone who owes them money or child support.
   "There are a million and one reasons why people want to find someone. Of the thousands of reunions I've done, not once did anyone say, "I'm sorry you found them," he said. "First loves are always great to look up. I met my first love on July 3,1968, and we still keep in touch. There is something about a first love, something that triggers people. We can say things to each other that no one else can. I would never let anyone take that away from me."
   Although he specializes in finding the hard-to-find, he also had some tips from the other side of the coin. If you are trying not to be found, he said there are ways to do it.
For example, when filling out a credit application, don't write in your real mother's maiden name. Make up a name.
   "The reason they want that isn't for suitability [to issue credit]. It has to do with being an identifier. When you call up to inquire on your account, they ask you questions for verification. If you give the wrong answer, you can't get the information," he said.
   As for phone numbers, if you want to protect yourself from an ex-boyfriend or someone else and want an unlisted phone number, don't list it under your name. Culligan suggested you list in under "J. Smith" or some other fictitious name that has nothing to do with you.

   "If someone calls for the phone number and is told it's unlisted, he could ask if that is the party at such-and-such an address. If they say yes, then the person has your address. If you put it under a different name, then even if someone has a friend at the telephone company who tries to pop the number, it wouldn't come up because it wouldn't be unlisted under your own name," he said.
   Culligan said much of what he does revolves around common sense, which he said everybody has.
   "On the TV talk shows, the audience all has the sense of Solomon when it comes to someone else's problems. But when it comes to you personally, you take shortcuts," he said.
   Culligan, who has worked for the media for years - he was involved in tracking down FBI agent Robert Hanssen who was charged last week with spying for the Russians - and he has also been featured on all of the major talk shows. On Thursday, he will be on ABC's "The Montel Williams Show" talking about a problem he uncovered in Long Island, N.Y.
   In an open Dumpster behind a bank, he found bank records that detailed customers' Social Security numbers, PIN numbers, signature cards and safety deposit box numbers. None of the documents had been shredded.
   "I'll be on the show with Congressman Gregory Meek [D-New York], who's on the banking committee of the House," he said. "He is going to introduce legislation that banks have to shred these documents.
   "That's the kind of work I want to do, things that help people," he said. "I've got to have a knight in shining armor image for myself."

Mirror staff Writer Margaret Moses can be reached at 946-7447