To be a successful private investigator, you’ve got to be ready to sit in a hot car for hours on end remaining alert the entire time. Vice President of Marketing and Sales of Genesis Information Services Todd Kelly explains, “It’s not as glamorous as TV makes it out to be. To be able to sit in the car for that long by yourself, you have to be a little off.” You also have to be ready to enter into dangerous situations. Todd got out of field work after one particularly frightening event.
Todd had been surveilling a man in Livingston Parish for three days. “He goes home one day, and I follow him back to his house. I’m sitting there, and two guys pull up, block me in, and start banging on the van,” says Todd. Todd is surrounded by the man he was surveilling and his friends. He knew that he couldn’t blow his cover, so he quickly came up with an excuse. “I come out into the front seat, mess my hair up, and say, ‘I was sleeping back there.’ He says, ‘No you weren’t, you were following me! You’ve been watching me for three days. I think you’re trying to rob me.’”
The man then pulls out a gun. Todd continues, “He’s shaking, and I tell him to get the gun out of my face in case it goes off. His friends are saying that they should just drag me out, beat me up, and throw me in the river. I think this is not going to end well.”
One of the man’s friends calls the police, and the responding officer tells Todd to leave the area immediately. He complies, but there was one major problem. “I have another investigator in the woods near his house. I leave, and I radio to the other investigator that I would be back to get him. I leave for about an hour and drive back. I say, ‘I’m coming by right now, get ready.’ I open the door of the van and tell him to jump in as I drove by. The investigator radios back, ‘The men are still out here.’”
Todd drives towards the man’s house with the van door open. He wouldn’t get another chance to retrieve his investigator. “The investigator jumps out of the woods and into the van. The three guys jump in the car and follow us down the gravel road. The van’s sliding all over the place. Then we get on the highway, and I’m taking off,” explained Todd.
Because of this event and others where he either nearly succumbed to heat stroke or was chased down by an angry subject, Todd decided that desk work was much more suitable.
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