Relocating is hard on a family. It happened to me last year when I received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a great tech job in San Antonio, Texas. I’d lived on Long Island my whole life, and was wary about uprooting my kids and wife and starting fresh. But life had gotten too expensive on Long Island, and my wife Carrie and I knew that we’d move eventually.
So when I got a call from this company in San Antonio, Carrie encouraged me to interview for it. I spent a few days interviewing and sight-seeing, just to get a flavor of the city. I checked out schools. I looked at parks. I even discovered the rich night life, you know, just in case Carrie and I also found a babysitter once in a while.
When I decided to take the job, we quickly found a neighborhood and school district that we loved. And then we found a great house – even bigger than the one we own now, and less expensive! When I crunched the numbers and looked at the taxes I’d pay, I immediately got excited for my family’s new adventure.
The closing on the house went fast. As soon as I knew we were in, I suddenly realized: we’ve lived in the same Long Island neighborhood for a decade. We knew all the people, we had friends, we would go to the grocery store and run into at least two families we were friendly with.
What would this new neighborhood hold for us? How could I be sure that our new neighbors weren’t serial killers, rapists, or baby snatchers? It’s a dangerous world, and you can never tell. You can never be too cautious.
We moved in and got the kids settled within a month. That first month was a whirlwind of activity, but at the back of my brain, I still thought about new neighbors. Everyone seemed downright charming. That set off an alarm in my head. They dropped off food and wine, said hi to the kids, wanted to set up play dates immediately. Really, how friendly could they be?
Carrie scoffed at me and said I needed to shake that east coast paranoia now that we were down south. “Everyone is just friendlier,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”
Well, Carrie loves and trusts everyone, but I don’t. I was doing some searching and found a background check online called Hero Searches. This amazing background search engine database allows you to search people by name, and if there is any public record associated with that person, you’d be able to see it.
Hero Searches does a criminal background check, court documents, marriage licenses, etc. Now I could search my neighbors by name and see what came up. It even gives a reverse phone number option to search those annoying people who call you but don’t leave a voice mail.
I told Carrie about it and she thought I was absolutely insane – until I showed her how it worked. Then she wanted to search every Facebook friend on her list! She even caught on to the reverse phone option, and now uses it all the time.
What did I turn up with Hero Searches? Absolutely nothing alarming on my new neighbors. And now I can sleep well at night, in my new city.
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