Gadgets, drug mules, cheating husbands: my life as a private investigator

Emmanuelle Welch was a journalist before becoming a PI. Now she tracks down embezzlers and the occasional lost teddy bear

I'm often asked how I chose the life of a private investigator. In my case it was an accident. PIs tend to be former law enforcement, but not always. I'm French and worked as a journalist before I made the leap.

I used to live in Los Angeles. A men's magazine asked me to do an article where I would track down people the magazine had written about years earlier and see how they were doing. It was incredibly difficult. I decided I wanted to get better at finding people. A local PI agency offered a course and I did several months of training. Soon I started doing legwork for local investigators. They liked that I was willing to drive miles to interview people and could write a good report. Eventually I opened my own shop.