The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that in January 2013, 610,042 people were homeless on any given night in the U.S. Individual city counts combined push that number to well over a million.

Mark E. Walker & Company has been successful in locating a fair number of homeless persons. We were contacted in the Fall of 2014 to locate a homeless gentlemen, who was last known by family members to have been in Bellingham, Washington. Locating the homeless is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. The homeless have gone "off the grid" and conventional tracing techniques simply don't work. Our investigation began in Bellingham. Further investigation revealed that our subject had not been in Bellingham for over 10 years. By cultivating leads, we learned that our subject had gone East.

Weeks later, we discovered our subject was using over twenty alias. By using various techniques, we learned our subject was homeless in Palm Beach, Florida. West Palm Beach County has a population of over a million three hundred thousand people. By creatively working with a number of agencies, we located our subject. A person was able to provide us with a current picture of our subject for verification purposes. Certain key questions were asked the subject that had been provided by our client in order to verify we had the correct person. Once these matters checked out, we arranged a telephone conference with our subject. The subject was entitled to an inheritance that would perpetually provide for his needs and allow him to leave the homeless life style behind.

The former owner of this dilapidated farm house secluded herself and lived a meager existence. Upon her death, her farm ground and timber was worth in excess of $4 million dollars. Having no will, no children or husband and no family contact information, the attorney representing the personal representative needed to determine her heirs under the laws of intestate succession.

A simple phone call to our office initiated an eight month investigation that turned up a complete total of 82 maternal and paternal heirs residing in 16 different states. The relationship of each heir was verified through our verification process and the attorney representing this estate received a concise report that included the names and addresses of each heir, their relationship to the decedent, heirship information, an Affidavit of Heirship, family charts, a percentage share amount printout, and mailing labels.

Ernest Taylor "Ernie" Pyle was a Pulitzer Prizewinning American journalist, known for his columns for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, where he worked as a roving correspondent from 1935 through most of World War II. Ernie Pyle was killed in combat while reporting the Battle of Okinawa. At the time of his death his columns were running in over 300 newspapers, and he was among the best known American war correspondent. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his, first-person reporting, which highlighted the role and plight of the common "dogface" infantry soldier. "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told,"wrote Harry Truman.

Ernie Pyle's legacy continues to this day. The Indiana University School of Journalism is housed in "Ernie Pyle Hall." His birth place in Dana, Indiana, has been restored as a museum. Ernie lived his later years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his last home was adapted as the first branch library of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System, named in his honor.

The Friends of Ernie Pyle, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and advancement of Pyle’s legacy, contacted me for business purposes to locate the descendants of two war heroes who Ernie Pyle chronicled in his weekly columns. They were Captain Henry T. Waskow and Sgt. Frank (Buck) Eversole.

Captain Henry T. Waskow died in combat during WWII. Ernie Pyle wrote of Captain Waskow:

In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

It is men like him that makes America Great.

The Case: Unknown mineral right owners, Greene County, Missouri; sale proceeds due rightful owners

The Result: Heirs receive money from Development Company

Our company was retained to determine and contact the current mineral right owners for a parcel of land being acquired by a development company in Missouri. This development company was working to buy the property from the current landowner, and also interested in acquiring the mineral rights before developing the land. The mineral right owners and the landowner were entirely different parties. While the current landowner was known, the development company needed assistance in determining and locating the current mineral right owners. The courthouse records indicated that the current mineral right owners were a family that obtained ownership in the 1930’s. Our work began with the names from the 1930’s records. We determined the four persons who owned the mineral rights were now deceased as well as their children. Further research determined that several grandchildren and great grandchildren were the legal heirs and descendants of the original owners. When our company located and contacted each of these heirs, they were unaware they even had an interest in these mineral rights and were even more surprised to receive money from the sale of these mineral rights.