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   Mansfield - The walls stand out. They are decorated with thousands of photographs of people. A few smile. Many more look stoic. Each person represents a story. At least, that's how super sleuth Pat Rutherford describes each snapshot.
   "I have the only job in the world where I love to get up in the morning and come to work," says the 71-year-old Mansfield private investigate, who lives in Arlington with his wife, Marti. "I hate the weekends because my wife won't let me get to work. I love finding people, love finding someone's mom or dad. It's a fun business."
   "Look at all those happy faces on those pictures," says Mr. Rutherford while pointing to the photographs posted on the walls in his office. In all, he's got 5,000 of them. "You may forget the names, but you don't forget the circumstances."
   For the past 18 years, Mr. Rutherford has tracked down long-lost loved ones as a private investigator through his business called Worldwide Tracers, Inc. He founded the venture nearly two decades ago in San Clemente, Calif., but moved to the Arlington-D/FW area three years ago.
   A clock with a sculpted silhouette of Dick Tracy hangs on one wall. There's a nearby hat rack with 19 different caps, berets and hats. A message near the front door reads: "Real Men Love Jesus." The Worldwide Tracers office on Main Street in Mansfield as colorful as its founder.
   I jovial man with a white beard and a well-rounded middle, Mr. Rutherford walks with a bouncy air through his downtown Mansfield office. His mission: To solve all cases he is asked to work on. So far, he's solved 14,000 cases "and counting," he adds. This year alone, he's juggling more than 1,000.
   The people he helps are often hurting and lonely. Whether it's finding a natural parent or searching for a runaway child, thousands of people across the country have turned to Mr. Rutherford to solve their predicaments and ease their pain.
   "We have a policy: We will not stop until we find who we're after, and boy, do we mean it," says the Texas native, whose eyes twinkle Santa Claus-style.

A world of emotions
   As a private investigator, Mr. Rutherford has been asked to find runaway teens, long-lost sweethearts and abducted children. Adults searching for their natural parents often come to him for help. The adoption search fee: $495.
   A wife unsure if her husband is cheating can turn to Mr. Rutherford, and - for a fee - he'll get her an answer.
   Tracking deadbeat dads, looking up long-lost loves and keeping tabs on cheating husbands make up just a portion of his work. One of his sons, Kirk Rutherford, 41, works with him as a private investigator. Mr. Rutherford readily admits two-thirds of his cases involve adoptions. An adult looking for his or her birth parents often turns to Mr. Rutherford and his staff for assistance.
   "These are hurting people because they are missing something really vital," says Kyleen Wright, private investigator for Worldwide Tracers. Ms. Wright handles adoption cases.
   "Some have been already searching [for their natural parents for] 10 years. They cry, they yell at us. And then, they pull back because they can't face it emotionally. You deal with a range of emotions."
   A map of the world - which has red dots all over it - hangs in the middle of the office. The markers represent the cases Worldwide Tracers has solved. There are 54 countries with red dots.
   "Most of our business is out of the country, out of the state of Texas. These are countries where we've completed at least one case - from Russia to China, literally all over the world," Mr. Rutherford says, pointing to the red markers.
   When touchy situations pop up, Mr. Rutherford mediates. He makes the first phone call to the natural parents letting them know that the child they put up for adoption is searching for them.
   "We start out a hero, they love us," says Mr. Rutherford of the initial reaction of people searching for their natural parents. "In the middle of it, we're a bum. They say, 'You're not doing anything.' Well, we're fighting all these [adoption] laws."

Sad, happy endings
   At times, clients get impatient when Mr. Rutherford's sleuthing doesn't yield quick results. For instance, there was one woman who was married multiple times. One of her natural children was searching for her.
   "Particularly in California, to find some woman who hasn't been married four or five times is unreal out there. I had one woman, I'm not kidding you, 12 marriages. That meant I had to go through 12 different names to find her," he says. "By the way, she wasn't in California. That was in Dallas. I never will forget about that. Saddest case I ever had. She had kids all over the place."
   But, not all stories are sad. One of Mr. Rutherford's clients, Linda Arnold, began her search for her natural mom in 1988. The 49-year-old biology teacher at DeSoto High School didn't even know her birth mother's name. She spent years, time and money in lawyers and private research looking for her.
   Somehow, she stumbled onto what she thought was her birth mother's name, and for years, used that for more information. But, it never produced anything. Eventually, she realized she had the wrong name.
   "There were times I'd search and search, put my name into registries, really go at it and then just drop it," Ms. Arnold says. "When I first started this search 10 years ago I committed to God this search would not rule me, would never control me."
   Finally, she turned to Mr. Rutherford and Worldwide Tracers. Last year, Ms. Wright learned Ms. Arnold's great-grandfather was Native American, which, by law gave Ms. Arnold the right to look at her adoption file - as previous laws prevented her from doing so.
   Rifling through her adoption papers, Ms. Wright found out Ms. Arnold's birth mother, Bobbie Francis Pierce Webb, died in Dallas in 1989 at the age of 59. She also learned Ms. Arnold has two siblings, half-brother David Webb, 43, of Watauga, and half-sister, Sandie Byers, 51, of Fort Worth.
   While Worldwide Tracers learned of this information, Ms. Arnold and her husband of 23 years, Daniel Arnold, were divorcing. As she was losing one family, she was gaining another.
   Ms. Arnold learned her birth mother gave her up for adoption at age 20. Her birth mother never told anyone about the adoption. When Ms. Arnold phoned her half-brother and half-sister, they were surprised. They also welcomed her.
   "No one ever knew about me - ever," Ms. Arnold says. "I will forever be indebted, grateful and appreciative to the ministry they [at Worldwide Tracers] have in making life connections. I don't think I can find the words to express my thankfulness."
   "I know they are not in it for the money," she says. "Their hearts are there and it show through their perseverance."
   Another Worldwide Tracers client, Jeff Means, had spent $1,500 searching for his natural mother before coming to Mr. Rutherford and his staff.
   "I had tried for five years to find her," says Mr. Means, 40, who was adopted when he was an infant. "I looked on my own, hired my own agency. I even used a retired FBI guy with his own private investigator service... all of them failed to find anything."
   Within months of meeting Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Means learned of his natural mother's whereabouts. He also discovered he has a half-sister and a half-brother, who is now deceased. The agency is now searching for his natural father, Albert Lovick.
   "Everybody should find this out - no matter how bad it my look," says Mr. Means, a Coppell resident. "It helps complete oneself."

Mending spirits
Mr. Rutherford knows he's mended broken spirits, broken hearts. Born in Houston on August 1, 1927, he was raised in San Antonio. At 17, he dropped out of high school. Mr. Rutherford got his diploma at age 51 after taking the GED, the high school equivalency test.
   In 1943 he married his wife, Marti, who was 13, and then joined the Army. He served on the battle field in the Philippines during World War II.
   When he came back from the war, he and his wife had three children and adopted three more. Eventually, he worked at a Dallas manufacturing company before retiring in 1974. After retirement, he went to Hawaii with his wife and "had one of those magical days. I became Christian," he says, smiling broadly. He regularly attends Sunday services at Calvary Temple church in Irving.
   "A year-and-a-half later a guy sent me a book about finding people that had money coming to them. I was so fascinated about it," says Mr. Rutherford.
   He returned to southern California and set up a business finding missing heirs. Eventually, he expanded his private investigator business to include adoption cases, runaway teens, and abducted individuals.
   And, in 1980, he founded Worldwide Tracers.
   "Most states have laws that say, 'You have no rights to find your mother or your father.' So, how do you get around that?" asks Mr. Rutherford.
   "We set up a legal department and we do legal petitions that go into the court. We go in legally and say, 'Mr. Judge, my client is dying of cancer. She needs medical information about her family and the law won't let her get it...' We make the judge open up the information."
   Mr. Rutherford takes a deep breath before saying of his job, "This is 100 percent a ministry."

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