The rest of my favorite links are here.

Hopefully, VINELink won’t drop their Sacramento County incarcerated offender name search because it’s more flexible than the one at the Sheriff’s website. Both were functional today. The Sheriff’s site requires a full first name and full last name to find an inmate. That’s not helpful if you want to see everyone with the same last name — which you’ll want to do if you only have a nickname. Or maybe you want to see all of the possible relatives simultaneously incarcerated, right? The VINELink database can be searched with a partial first name AND a partial last name.

But these databases are better in tandem because the inmate information shown by the Sacramento Sheriff is more detailed. Alias’ and DOB’s are shown for those in custody and for released inmates, along with their release date. Because the date of birth is excised for out-of-custody inmates on VINELink you don’t know whether the “James Johnson’s” listed are the same person, or whether they are a match with those at the Sheriff’s site.

But neither site had private investigators in mind when they developed these tools.

The rest of my favorite links are here.

The rest of my favorite links are here.

I previously mentioned online government public record indexes at PIbuzz that you can search using various wildcard symbols with partial company or personal names.

Some databases won’t return results if you enter a partial first or last name or if you only enter one or the other. But sometimes you may want to do a less restricted search of a marriage index. For example, you may know the first name of the bride and want to find all men who married a woman with that first name. Or you only have the last name for the groom and you want to find all records, without having to enter a first name. I’ve faced this situation when I’m doing genealogical searches for pension beneficiaries, heirs in probate cases or just trying to find someone or update their name. Sometimes my information is so dated that there’s no link between that and and the content in proprietary databases — such as those that have credit headers, historical phone listings and court records.

Try this next time you’re searching the birth, death or marriage index at the county Recorder’s onsite computer. Enter the first or last name in the designated field and put two percentage symbols (%%) in the other field. I tried this recently at the San Mateo County Recorder and it worked perfectly.

Do you have a tip for wildcard searching public records?

Let’s talk technique. If a search field is “first name” you would generally enter the person’s first name. But what if you only know part of it?

Most counties in California that have an online case index only have it for civil cases. Some that have civil and criminal records split them into separate databases which, of course, function differently. San Joaquin County court is a good example. The civil case inquiry “participant name” selection requires a full last name but no first name. It also works with a partial first name. The “business” selection supports partial entity name search. “Din” returns “Dine”, “Dino”, “Dinesh”, etc. But, you ask, what if the “din” appears somewhere in the string but not at the beginning? Use the query form: %din. This returns “Midland Funding”, “Dolan Building Materials”, etc.

The San Joaquin County Family Law, Criminal and Traffic Case Inquiries screen looks and functions entirely differently. There is one field for the name. Enter “din” and get “Reading” and “Balandin”, among other variations. It also returns results where “din” is in the first name. That’s nice.

Here’s a synopsis of how you can structure your partial name queries at other county court sites.

Siskiyou: You can do a partial name search even though the site tells you, “Do not use punctuation or special characters when searching.” A partial last name search, where “din” appears somewhere in the string: %din. A partial last name and first name search can be done alone or together. The percent symbol isn’t necessary.

Solano: Solano County uses the CourtConnect program. Select “Check for Partial Last Name” to search that string from the beginning of the name. A partial first name can be included. Narrow your search with the “Case Type” feature.

Stanislaus: A partial last name search, where “din” appears somewhere in the string: %din. A partial last name search can include a full or partial first name. A percent sign can be added to a first name string and combined with a last name string. First name “%bin with last name “%air” returns the records for “Robin Adair”. If your result is an active traffic case, select the link “Click Here to pay this citation online” to verify the date of birth.

Shasta: You can perform a partial name search but then you have to guess the year of filing. Ugh.

Contra Costa: The “Open Access” system can be searched by partial last name. Last name “Jon%” returns any string beginning with those letters and “%Jon” will return that string within the last name. Add a first name or initial to limit the results.

Find direct links to each court index at SearchSystems.net.

A few counties have images of case filings online. But even those counties don’t have all images for any one case or for all cases on their website. Most of those that do, link to the pdf of the case document right from the docket. Sacramento County has made that process more complicated.

Then there are the counties that charge for everything from a name lookup to document retrieval. Can I hear some outrage?