FIND PEOPLE FAST UNITES MAN WITH FORGOTTEN WAR BUDDIES

In 1961, Art Sobery was stationed with a small Army unit in West Berlin during one of the scariest periods of the Cold War. They were surrounded by the newly-built Berlin Wall, and real war always seemed to lurk around the next confrontation.

Sobery, then a surgical technician, often has wondered what happened to some of the guys he shared the tension and exuberant youthfulness of those times with.

So it was that while driving in St. Louis one day last August, Sobery heard someone on the radio talking about Find People Fast.

Find People Fast is a St. Louis-based company in operation for about a year. It primarily is a data base consisting of the names and addresses of 130 million people living in the U.S.

That requires a big-memory computer system which has been fed information from public domain sources departments of motor vehicles, credit information, telephone records, direct mail advertising and voter registrations lists.

True to its name, the company can find people. And quickly. It claims an 85 percent success rate.

The procedure is simple. Call the toll free number, 1-800-829-1807, and provide the operator with the name of the person to be found. The operator can determine immediately whether there are any matches. No match, no charge.

If the caller wants the matches, Find People Fast collects $17.50 by credit card. The same day, the company will mail or fax (for $1 extra) the caller a list of matches for the name, up to 33. Each additional page of matches costs $1.

Sobery, a Cape Girardeau sales executive, ran into a common obstacle was he looking for Alan Doss, Allan Doss or Allen Doss?

Find People Fast cranked out 22 names with all three spellings. Sobery sent a letter to all 22. "Within one week, I had received seven to eight personal long-distance phone calls wishing me good fortune in my search and informing me that they're the wrong Allan Doss," Sobery said.

Before another week went by, he was contacted by the right Allan Doss in Tacoma, Wash.

Graham Bloy, one of the partners in Find People Fast, got the idea for the company after he successfully but arduously searched for his biological parents. He thought there ought to be a better way.

James Laux, Bloy's partner, said the most typical personal searches are for old military buddies, birth parents or children, old classmates or lost relatives. Laux said attorneys or banks also often use the company to find lost heirs.

Most the time it's good news all around when people are found, Laux said.

There was the Kirkwood woman reunited with her father after 40 years. A 45-year-old woman in Iowa located her father in Michigan. He had not known she existed.

"If someone is making an effort not to be found, chances are we're not going to find them either," Laux said.

Sometimes the request is more quirky than heart warming. Someone looking for country singer Charlie Pride was provided a list of Charlie Prides. Another someone couldn't be helped, wanting a list of movie stars who make donations to poor people.

Find People Fast is developing new wrinkles. One is the ability to search by Social Security number, which returns a name or names using the number, the spouse's name, a current address based on last reported credit activity, a former address and an indication of whether the person is still living.

Also, inputting a name and last-known address can return a current address based on the last reported credit activity.

They're working on getting maiden names into the computer, but it's a huge job because most marriage records in the U.S. are not computerized.

Sobery, a Cape Girardeau sales executive, has since found another old Army buddy through Find People Fast. When they've rounded everyone up, they're planning a reunion.

"We're all very different people," he said. "But there's something between us that's unexplainable."