In addition to these search engines, try social networking and affinity sites where your friend may have registered like facebook.com, twitter.com, linkedIn.com and classmates.com.

Another option is to check out high school alumni websites. Not every school has its own site, but some do, and you can look for it by going to any search engine and typing in the name of the school with the city and state it’s located in. You can also search at alumniclass.com, a huge hosting site for thousands of high schools across the U.S.

If you’re looking for old college friends, your university alumni association may be able to help. While they probably won’t give you the contact information of the person you’re looking for, they may be able to forward a message for you.

If you’re looking for someone you served with in the military, military.com offers a free “Buddy Finder” service that has a database of more than 20 million records.

And if the person you’re looking for is politically active, the Federal Election Commission’s Web site (fec.gov) lists the addresses, ZIP codes and occasionally even the occupations of those who have given $250 or more to a national campaign.

Deceased friends

If you can’t find any current information about the person you’re searching for, it could be that he or she is dead. To find out if that’s the case, several sites including familysearch.org and tributes.com offer free access to the Social Security Death Index, a listing of around 90 million deaths in the United States. Legacy.com also adds a database of published obituaries from hundreds of American newspapers.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.