The world of Hawaii's private investigators includes undercover gumshoes conducting covert surveillance (TOP) as well as researchers like Debra Allen (ABOVE), who uses genetic databases to reunite families and find missing persons.
As a veteran of the Israeli Special Forces, he has done similar work under much worse circumstances. "Sitting in the rain and mud all night, hot during the day," he says, shaking his head. He doesn't mention the flying bullets. "This," he gestures at the growing crowd of coffee sippers around us, "hardly seems like work."
Ethan is serious but easygoing, getting more talkative as the coffee kicks in. He doesn't raise an eyebrow when I ask how his life compares to Magnum's. "Eh, you know, it's work in a beautiful place. One day I was on surveillance and noticed that Hawaii 5-O was filming across the street."
Suddenly, he spots our guy's truck pulling up to the work site. Ethan raises his phone, a new model with an absurd zoom capability, and snaps a shot. He texts his client the photo. A reply comes quickly: "Make sure he is actually working." Ethan shrugs, finishes his coffee and says, "I've documented him working for the last four days. I guess she wants to know for sure." Hawaii is a no-fault divorce state, so documenting infidelity is not required, but any information can be useful in divorce proceedings. Most of the time, Ethan says, clients just want to know. Ethan says, "We seek the truth. It's not personal."
We leave the coffee shop and duck into a nook by an ABC store. "I'm going to walk by, see if I can talk to him, maybe ask how much he charges," Ethan says, donning a pair of sunglasses. Of course, discrete hidden cameras and microphones are embedded in them (as well as headphones so he can listen to music on the job). He tells me to hang back.
Ethan doesn't shy away from this type of "contact surveillance"-approaching and talking to the target. "A few years ago a client wanted to know why his wife went to Maui alone." Ethan told me. "She said she wanted to golf, but the husband wasn't so sure. I watched her golf all day, then eat at a restaurant alone." So, just to make sure, he chatted her up at the bar. "She talked kindly about her husband and said she just needed a day off to relax. I like when there is a happy outcome."
Of course, not all the outcomes are happy. Ethan was hired to surveil a gentleman whose terms of his child custody agreement stated that he could not drink alcohol. After a day of watching him, Ethan snapped a photo of the man drinking an alcoholic beverage. Again, Ethan says, "We just want the truth. It's not personal."
Clients who hire private investigators just "seek the truth," says "Ethan," an Oahu PI who often conducts surveillance to expose cheating spouses and other dubious behavior. "It's not personal."
Ethan, and just about every PI I talk to, keeps a low profile so as not to be "made," i.e., identified as an investigator. Don't expect to find bragging selfies of actual PIs on social media. Most of the time, tinted windows, a ball cap and sunglasses are enough to maintain secrecy. Ethan, for example, has never had to don an elaborate Mission: Impossible disguise.
Not so for Debra (also perhaps not her real name). She's not camera-shy, like most gumshoes-she's appeared on History's Greatest Mysteries. Debra is the owner of 808 Investigations, a firm that specializes in finding missing persons. She's known for having reunited more than five thousand families.
A fast-talking veteran of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and former senior investigator at Riverside County's District Attorney's office, Debra was one of the few female beat cops and probably the second female homicide detective in that department's history. And she's no slouch. "I spent seven years as the SWAT negotiator and an investigator of sexual assault cases and crimes against children," she says. Now her expertise involves utilizing genetic databases like Ancestry.com and 23andMe as well as birth and death records-sources that have led to solving many cold cases. "I'm a genetic genealogy researcher," she explains. "My work involves locating estranged relatives, individuals experiencing homelessness and reuniting post-adoption biological parents."
Her professional notoriety as a people-finder is sometimes an asset. In Louisiana someone happened upon a box of curious documents that turned out to be the records of a fly-by-night adoption agency. The proprietor had kept adoption records in the event that both the children and birth mothers wished to be reunited, but he skipped town and left the documents behind. The person who found them knew they'd be useful for Debra, and they have been: They've helped her reunite dozens of families—but only in cases where both parties want to be reunited.
Debra has even turned her investigative eye on herself. After taking a DNA test, she found her father's biological father and a niece she never knew she had. Many of us have turned our DNA into commercial ancestry sites to discover our heritage or find long-lost relatives. Sometimes that works but, Debra says, "not all databases are created equal. If you don't find what you're looking for in one, you can search the other sites—or enlist the services of a licensed private investigator like myself." But Debra's services don't come cheap, if she agrees to accept the case at all. The going rate for Debra and most other PIs is $150 to $200 per hour. Debra is selective about choosing her clients because she can be, but she'll routinely refer clients to other PIs she trusts.
While family reunions are often stories with happy endings, sometimes people who've ended up on the streets would rather not be found. In one case, while working with the Institute for Human Services, a local nonprofit that assists Hawaii's houseless population, she tracked down a man at the request of his family. "The family received a long-awaited phone call from their missing son, who playfully exclaimed, 'Get your dogs off me, I am calling you!' in reference to my efforts to find him," Debra recalls. "While he wasn't ready to leave the streets, I continue to serve as a bridge between him and his family. If he decides to seek help, I can step in as an intermediary."
Nevertheless, Debra's nickname at IHS is now Dawg.
Want to get your foot in the door as a private investigator? It's best to have a background in law enforcement, but even if you aren't a veteran homicide detective like Debra, there are many emerging possibilities.
If you know your way around computers, digital forensics is a promising career path. With much of our lives uploaded to the internet, open source intelligence (OSINT) is an increasingly lucrative field for both journalists and private investigators. It's shockingly easy to build a dossier on someone by social media alone, including addresses, close personal associates and estimated net worth. Amateur newshounds analyze photos on social media and satellite maps to document events in war zones and disaster areas, all without getting their shoes gummy. For private investigators, cracking the password to a laptop or phone can reveal critical clues to solving a case. A good, ethical hacker is hard to find and very expensive. When I asked PIs about their cybersleuths, well, they changed the subject.
Like most businesses, investigative firms tend to specialize in a niche. Kiamalu Consulting & Investigations performs routine surveillance and missing-person investigations like Ethan and Debra but specialize in industrial espionage. They use a bug sweeper, an electronic device that detects hidden cameras, microphones and other surveillance devices. Of course, I want to try it out, but the device requires special training and costs a cool $200,000.
Kiamalu also specializes in skip tracing—i.e., finding deadbeats who skip out on their debts—and much of their methodology relies on internet sleuthing. But, you just can't hack your way around to find your man and expect it to stick in a court of law; your methods need to be pristine, well documented, repeatable and legal. Investigators need to be up to speed on laws that protect the privacy of all. Evidence obtained illegally will be inadmissible in court, even if it's a smoking gun.
The stalwart investigations firm Goodenow & Associates was founded in the 1960s by FBI veterans and works with law firms seeking information in high-profile cases. They've earned their chops in recent years working on complicated civil and legal cases. How do you investigate a corrupt police chief (Louis Kealoha) and a local crime boss (Michael Miske)? Very meticulously. Evidence gathered by professional, third-party investigators is valued in court proceedings that are attempting to discover the facts of the matter. A botched investigation could see a criminal walking free. Firms like Goodenow and Kiamalu are involved in high-profile cases, but exactly how they won't say; they are predictably tight-lipped about their investigations and methods, especially because these cases are in active litigation.
Back on the not-so-mean streets of Waikiki, I wait for Ethan to return from his contact surveillance. I pretend to browse on my phone, trying not to look suspicious. Suddenly I'm aware that there are a lot of other suspicious loiterers. Cooks on break from a noodle shop, people waiting for their rides, miscreants maybe doing miscreant things. Or maybe not: Maybe they're just cooks and people waiting for their Uber.
Ethan comes back to collect me in his nondescript SUV (with dark-tinted windows) and now wearing beach clothes, you know, to make sure he's not recognized. "I didn't make contact, but I did get some shots of him working," he says. "I think the client is satisfied." When I tell him I'm starting to get a little paranoid, "All the new guys feel that way," he says.
Ethan works with a few other agents who do similar work. In fact, that's how he got started. "I was investigating part time for other firms while I was studying at Hawaii Pacific University. You need four years of experience as a PI to get your license, and I hardly noticed I had been doing it for that long." He's been in the field for twenty years and managed Hawaii Pacific Investigations for more than a decade; surveillance seems to suit him just fine.
I ask about the next mission. "Eh, nothing exciting. I'm watching a house in Ewa Beach. The client wants to know who is coming and going." It's a mission that involves sitting in his SUV. For hours. No jumping from roof to roof. No chasing a bad guy down an alley on a motorcycle. Just simple surveillance for Ethan, if that is his real name.
Oh, and Luke is not my real name, either. I write under a pseudonym for professional (not criminal) reasons. I must have flummoxed every PI I contacted for this story, because they called the magazine for my real name to do a background check. And the magazine happily doxxed me.
