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The featured member of this week is Pat Harkness. Pat recently
moved back to Grand Rapids, Michigan from Long Beach, California. He was
also just promoted to an AD position for Michigan.
Being single
with no children Pat focuses his spare time to being an AD and he also
enjoys gadgets and technological devices. In his own words, he enjoys what
some people consider "all the nerdy and geeky things."
He
especially enjoys a "high tech treasure hunt" type sport called Geocaching It's a game
played using the Internet and a GPS system to locate items hidden by other
gamers.
Pat came to us as a matter form the heart as he first
became involved in the Doe Network after receiving a call from Carol
Cielecki. Carol had came across a potential match that involved his own
cousin, Sean Cutler. After see the match, Pat knew indeed this was his
cousin Sean who has been missing from New Jersey since 1993. See
Article
During the months it took to finalize the
identification of Sean and to lay him to rest, Pat realized that more had
to be done. He still looks at pictures of these missing people and get a
tear in his eye, knowing first hand what their families have had to and
continue to endure. Sean's family were extremely grateful and welcomed
Carol to the belated funeral for Sean. But a simple "thank you" wasn't
enough for Pat.
Aside from both Pat and Carol soon become Doe
Network members after Seans identification, Pat soon found other ways to
help.
Bandwidth always seems to be a problem at the Doe Network,
especially after a case gets some major news coverage. In this plight we
endure, Pat saw a chance to repay the debt of gratitude he felt.
Aside form working in real estate, Pat is a co-owner in a web
hosting and design business H3Hosting He knew he had what we needed as he is able to
purchase bandwidth in Terabytes, HUGE chunks of bandwidth he wanted to
share with us. Pat set us up an account with his hosting company. Though
we won't be able to move our exiting files without great pains, links
going dead where people have bookmarked, we will be able to use it for our
new cases! It won't banish our bandwidth problem altogether, but it can
keep it from getting worse, and we look forward to a more secure future
thanks to Pat.
With Pat's help we hope to gradually over several
months to be able to gravitate some of our older cases to the new host.
And we will like move some of the heavily viewed pages like our main page
to the new host as well. It is a long and difficult task to relocate, so
we will have to maintain the bravepages account for some time to come.
Also provided was the additional domain name for the Doenetwork.us
in addition to the current
Doenetwork.org.
Just another step to make the group easier to locate.
Pat has also mentioned
that he wanted to develop special pricing for other Doe Network members
that maintained their own personal pages.
So Pat was able to give
us a tremendous gift of his kind appreciation, not only by donating the
space, but by joining the group and becoming an active member. Seems to
have found his niche and often sounds off in reply to technical issues. I
have a feeling it will be really nice having "technical support" on staff.
Now that he has joined us here at the Doe Network, Pat has
embarked on a new type of treasure hunt as we seek the elusive identities
of thousands of cases.
Pat is yet again proof positive that our
work indeed brings blessings upon us. The group was able to bring closure
to his family, and he wanted to help us continue the task to help others.
I cannot think of a better way to pay tribute to the memory of his cousin
Sean.
Author: Todd Matthews
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