Depending on how serious you are (but maybe not "police" serious) and also your financial situation, this is the kind of stuff a Private Investigator can do.
Call Colter Shaw!
My first thought is contact police because only they have the resources to start an investigation, looking into phone data and thoroughly searching.
My second thought is if you know someone with knowledge or if you have time to read up on OSINT skills, these could help if you need to do your own search.
Maybe someone has better ideas though.
If none of the online and similar stuff works, it might be time for the family to file a missing person report. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agre about a guy who disappeared like that. He was eventually confirmed to be ok, but had apparently decided to go off the map for personal reasons.
There was also a medical researcher whose name I've forgotten, who also went dark iike that. Her family eventually found her and she said oh, she hadn't been up to much, and just didn't realize that anyone was looking for her. She did some well known work connecting allergies with cancer but I haven't been able to identify her through a few web searches. Anyone remember?
Added: aha, found. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margie_Profet
See also: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201205/the-mysterious-case-the-vanishing-genius
Added 2: Oh my, I didn't know the whole story. Profet apparently had physical and mental health issues, possibly schizophrenia, and she gradually pulled away from people who knew her, rather than suddenly vanishing. After she had been missing for years, the article above found its way to her and she contacted her family. IDK what if anything she has been doing since then, but she appears to still be around. She reminds me a bit of John Forbes Nash, mathematician who was the subject of the book and movie "A Beautiful Mind". https://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces-reunites-with-family.html
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~