Lost Sheep/Inactive - What Would You Do?

[Mottzzz]

I'm in a pretty transient area. One of my pet peeves is when we receive records for an inactive member and it seems like someone just found an address on the internet and sent the record to us. Then we find that that person doesn't live at the address in our ward. Because of this, I hate doing it to other wards and clerks and try my darnedest to confirm that an address is current and correct.

Here is my situation...
We've had a member's record for 9 years now. (I've been the clerk for a year and a half.) In doing my digging, I don't think he even lived at the address in our ward during these last 9 years. I've tried contacting the ward where his father lives and was told that the father is a Do Not Contact. I've contacted two wards where the mother is (her address is in one and she attends in the other). I haven't gotten any real response back. Three different Find People websites give me the same address in the large city where I live, but the property is owned by someone else and I believe there are multiple units. I just don't have any way of being sure that he's there.

These are the options that I've been considering...
1. Send the record to where the address in the big city is and email the clerk to dispatch the missionaries to check it out
2. Send the record to his mother's ward and her address since they likely have the best chance of figuring it out if they have any kind of contact with her (which I believe they do)
3. Send it to Address Unknown/Salt Lake (the option that I'm trying to avoid)

Maybe there is some other option that I haven't considered.

[russellhltn]

What would I do? Option 3.

In my mind, the instructions for finding are supposed to be limited to either simple things (like sending a letter to the last known address), or using local resources (ward member's knowledge, contacts, local family) to find them. I don't believe it's intended that unskilled local units do a national people search. I say this because I don't think the instructions have changed/been clarified since the pre-internet days when the only resources were local. So, my attitude is do what you can locally (things that CHQ wouldn't be able to do) and then move them out. At some point you have to give up and focus that same energy on the ones that you can reach.

My understanding is that CHQ has missionaries for finding the "unknown". Presumably they have the tools and training to do that.