If your friend has a very common name (like Sarah Jones), there may be multiple people that show up when you type in his/her name. You’ll have to do some more digging to find your friend. Consider typing in the name of the high school that you both attended, or the city that you live in to narrow down the searches. You could also spend some time browsing the friend lists of some of your other high school classmates on Facebook to see find other friends from high school.
This might include a professional website with contact information or links to various social media accounts. However, this might be difficult if your friend has a very common name. Try searching for their name along with another identifying term, like the name of your high school.
Websites like this typically search recorded phone book information, court records, criminal records, and other official types of documents to find the person you’re looking for. They will usually provide you with the person’s name, age, city, and a list of some known relatives. Sometimes you can also get phone numbers and addresses, but you may have to pay for this information. Some examples include whitepages. com, peoplefinder. com, or Pipl.
Also, by looking through your yearbooks you might remember another friend that you’d like to get together with sometime.
Perhaps they will know if your friend got married and changed their name, or if your friend moved to another city or works at a certain place. These are all important pieces of information that could help you find your friend. Try asking your parents or other family members if they remember anything else that might help you find your friend from high school.
Although most times your friend will have moved out of the house that they lived in during high school, talk to their parents or the current owners of the home and try to find out where your friend lives now and if they’ll give you any updated contact information.
This will cost money, so keep that in mind before deciding to go this route.
But remember that Facebook has a feature that filters out messages from people not on your friends list and sends them to a separate “other messages” folder. It may take a while for your friend to see the message because of this if you don’t add them as a friend first.
If your friend lives too far away to meet up, consider calling them or Skyping with them. Or you can just catch up with some messages or emails back and forth.
Making it a group event may also take away some of the pressure when you see your old high school friend for the first time.
