Served & Found
Worried about your adult child in Tempe? What a PI can do
The call usually comes from out of state. A mother in Chicago or a father in San Diego hasn't heard from their son in three weeks. The texts are short or don't come at all. A roommate mentioned a new girlfriend, or a new crowd, or that he hasn't been to class. The parents are paying rent on an apartment near Arizona State University's Tempe campus and they want to know what is going on.
Private investigators in Tempe get versions of this call often enough that it's worth explaining what they can and can't do. The short version: a lot of useful, quiet fact-finding is possible. Reading your adult child's private life is not.
Start with the hard boundary
Once a student turns 18, they are an adult in the eyes of the law, even if you pay for everything. A licensed private investigator has no special access to their school records, medical records, bank accounts, phone records or email. If someone tells you they can get those without the student's consent or a court order, end the call. That person is offering to break the law, and you could be on the hook alongside them.
Arizona's wiretap statute, A.R.S. 13-3005, makes it a felony to intercept a phone call or electronic communication you aren't part of without the consent of a party, or to record a conversation you aren't present for without a party's consent. That rules out a lot of what people imagine when they say "investigator": no secretly recording your daughter's calls, no spyware on a laptop you bought, no hidden recorder in the apartment.
What a private investigator can realistically do
Most of the work falls into four buckets.
Confirming they are where they say they are. If your son says he still lives in the apartment off Apache Boulevard, along the light rail line, a private investigator can confirm whether he is coming and going, whether the car is there, and whether it looks lived in. That's done from public places, the same view anyone walking past would have.
A respectful welfare-style check. Sometimes the most useful outcome is a short report that says: he was seen leaving the apartment at 11 a.m., walked to the light rail stop, and appeared well. For a scared parent in another time zone, that can be worth a lot. If you have any real concern about immediate safety, though, call the police and ask for a welfare check first. A private investigator is not a substitute for that.
Public records. Court filings, traffic citations, evictions, and recorded property and business records are public. A private investigator can check whether your child has been named in a Maricopa County case or has picked up a citation, which sometimes explains a sudden silence.
Looking into a new person in their life. If a new partner or business "opportunity" seems off, a private investigator can run public-record background research on that person. This is often the most useful piece, because it doesn't involve watching your own child at all.
What usually isn't worth paying for
Days of open-ended surveillance on a college student rarely tell parents what they need. Students keep irregular hours, live in dense blocks around downtown Tempe and the Mill Avenue district, and move on foot, bike, scooter and the light rail. Following someone through that for a week costs real money and often produces a log of coffee runs.
A tighter brief works better. Ask for a specific answer to a specific question: is he still living at this address, is she attending the job she says she has, who is the man whose name keeps coming up.
Think about how it ends
Before you hire anyone, think about what you'll do with the answer. Many families end up using the report to start a direct conversation, sometimes in person, sometimes with a counselor involved. If your child later finds out you hired someone, that conversation gets harder. Some parents decide the trip to Tempe is the better first step.
Also think about whether the problem is really a safety issue, a money issue or a trust issue. Those lead to different answers, and only some of them involve a private investigator.
Hiring someone in Tempe
Arizona private investigators are licensed by the Department of Public Safety, and DPS says license status can be checked through its Public Services Portal. Ask for the license number and look it up yourself. Our guide on verifying an Arizona private investigator license walks through it.
Be clear with any private investigator you talk to that this involves an adult child, and ask how they handle that. A good one will tell you what they won't do before you ask. The Tempe private investigators page lists private investigators who are members of the Arizona Association of Licensed Private Investigators (AALPI), and the East Valley private investigators page widens the search to neighboring cities.
If you are not sure what kind of help fits, our explainer on what a private investigator does and can't do is a good place to start, and the Tempe page has the rest of the local listings. Write down the one question you most need answered before you make the first call.
See the board: everyone in Tempe · private investigators only.