Private Investigator relishes piecing together clues

FINDING missing people and reuniting families drives a Ballajura private investigator to continue her high success rate.

Pathfinder Investigations managing director Jan Ross (56) has been an investigator for about 26 years and specialises in missing persons and court documents.

Ms Ross said she was upgraded to a certified member of the Council of International Investigators last week.

The Ballajura resident moved to Perth in 2010, after she worked as a police officer at West Yorkshire Police in England for almost 20 years.

During her time in the UK, her team had a 100 per cent success rate because of the national policy she helped instigate.

Ms Ross often attended missing person conferences overseas including a conference related to the infamous Madeleine McCann case.

Ms Ross said she had 345 contacts in 120 countries and covered 60 aspects of private investigation.

“I would say my bread and butter work is serving court documents and that is things like writ of summons, divorce and custody papers but for private clients and public clients,” she said.

A local case Ms Ross held close to her was one of a family’s missing son.

“In about 2004, this son went up to the Pilbara for work and the following year he lost touch with his family,” she said.

“In 2014, the family got in touch with the Salvation Army family tracing service but they took 14 months to come up with nothing, they had no leads.

“It took me three weeks to find the guy here in Perth and obviously the family was very keen to turn up on the doorstep and welcome him with open arms again.”

Ms Ross said she convinced the father to read a book called Healing for Family Rifts before meeting his son again.

“As a result of that, when one of the brothers turned up on the doorstep and saw this long-lost brother, they spoke for some three hours and got so engaged in the conversation that he nearly missed the birth of his second child,” she said.

“It reminds me why I do this job…it is all about job satisfaction and making a difference in peoples’ lives, not just a nine-to-five office job.”

She said she loved making connections with someone who had been through a lot of stress.

“Either because they are missing someone; that is what is called ‘ambiguous loss’ when you do not know whether someone is dead or alive and you find them -that is gold,” she said.