Help Find Alumni

Our classmate contact list has been kept fairly well up to date. There are fewer than 20 with whom we have lost contact. If you know a postal or email address for the classmates listed on the message board here, please respond to the post. If you'd like to help search, this article written by another group lists resources and ideas:

RESOURCES and IDEAS to HELP YOU find CLASSMATES
(Items below in blue are hyperlinks you can click on to go to a website)


    1.    White Pages - Start your search here.
    2.    Any Who - or Start here (similar to White Pages).
    3.    ZabaSearch - Is my new (best) favorite search method. Excellent detailed contact information but it really helps to have a first or middle initial of the person you are looking for. Wow! There are a LOT of people with the same name.
    4.    Google -this search will pull up websites they are listed on but it will also pull up variations of their name that are not related.
    5.    Wikipedia - Try this search, sometimes if someone has done something of notoriety you will find them. I did, and was shocked by what I found.
    6.    You may already have an account at one of the following 4 websites. There may be others too. If not open one for FREE. Of course they do have paid memberships also. You just have to skip or bypass all of their SIGN UP NOW FOR PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP if you don't want to pay a fee. You can usually send them a message. If so, invite them to visit our website.  Sometimes you will be able to see an email address, but it may not be current. They may list all classmates who are registered at our high school from all years. Make sure you click on our graduating class year to sort by only our year. This saves time going through the list.
    7.    While on these class, social networking and reunion sites you could contact possible siblings. They are in classes before and after ours with the same name. If related, see if they have information on our classmate or ask them to forward a request to visit our website. Ask if you can follow-up with them in a week or so if the classmate has not signed up. Or ask if they will let you know when they have sent a request to their sibling. (Otherwise you may not know if you had a successful contact). One problem you may run into: many classmates that originally signed up on one of these sites several years ago probably have changed their emails or have moved and did not update them.
    8.    ONE IMPORTANT NOTE WHEN CONTACTING SIBLINGS or other family members: They may be hesitant to just give you information or an email address. It helps if you give them our web site address: www.Indianola71.com and give them the administrators email address: indianola71@gmail.com. If they don't know you they should feel more comfortable with this.
     9.    FACEBOOK
   10.    CLASSMATES
   11.    MYSPACE
   12.    REUNION
   13.    When all of the above has failed the next option is to try one of the next three web sites. They can be free but they really want to sell you a membership or get you to pay for a service. People Finders has a 24 hour membership (once) that you can try but you have to select one of their advertisers offers. It may be a free or minimal fee but it allows you to use the service for one whole day. You might want to try it on a weekend when you want to devote a block of time to hunt for a large list of people. Be careful, there are a lot of people with the same name (and/or the same middle name) when searching across the U.S. for someone who may have moved. It is definitely helpful to have their full name or initials.
    14.    PEOPLE FINDERS
    15.    PEOPLE SEARCHING
    16.    OLD FRIEND SEARCH
    17.    Indianola Record Herald. You may be able to put in a FREE ad that states we are trying to locate "Missing Classmates" to attend the Class Reunion. There names are: (list them). Relatives, friends and neighbors who still live in town may know where they are and could email our class email address.
    18.    RELATIVES, FRIENDS and NEIGHBORS who still live in town are possibly listed in the phonebook. You can check for names that match the classmate you are looking for but that could take some time calling each one and asking if they know or are related. But it does work. Let them know why you are calling first. "I'm trying to find so and so who was a classmate of mine that we are trying to locate for the upcoming reunion". If you know the address where the classmate lived you can also use CRISS-CROSS directories to find phone numbers of neighbors who may know where they moved to or other helpful information. You can find these directories at the library for free or Google them on line but this will probably cost a fee to use them.
    19.    How To Investigate-Public Records Sites - this may be useful but you will have to read through it and decide if anything would be helpful to you.
    20.    Department of Justice-Missing Person Search: If you can’t find them, do a search to see if they are on this list. Hopefully not, but so far we have found one.
    21.    Social Security Death Index Records Search: I use this all of the time for family history research and have found several classmates information here. Of course the sad thing is that they are not with us anymore.
    22.    CRIME TIME - It is not necessarily just for researching those who have served time in Justice Centers although you will find lots of that. There are resources that help in many areas and if you have time to scan through all the different resources.
    23.    If you ever come across a classmates email address the best thing to do is ENTER THE EMAIL ADDRESS on the HOME PAGE of our website, at the bottom right side in the "MISSING CLASSMATES" box. (You can also go to their name on "Classmate Profiles" and it will ask if you have their email address. You can enter it there too). They will get an email invitation directly from the website administrator. You can email the classmate yourself if you want, but please do this after first entering it into our website as outlined above. Go ahead....put your email address in to see what the email looks like that they will get.
    24.    If you have any other resources or methods that you feel should be added to this list, please contribute!
 
Thanks and Good Hunting!

Credit: Bruce Eskander of South Pasadena High School Class of 1972; updated 3/19/11