Private investigators: 'Like going on a scavenger hunt when you don't know what you're looking for'

Private investigators: 'Like going on a scavenger hunt when you don't know what you're looking for': "Jeff Means spends 10-hour days staring at a TV screen, editing surveillance videotape shot by his investigators.

The Hazel Green private investigator and founder of Sound Mind Investigations has a marker board in his office filled with a long list of ready-to-be-edited surveillance tapes.

Means and his six-person staff are often hired by individuals in the North Alabama area hoping to win child custody or find out if their spouse is cheating.

While the general perception of the fast-growing field of private investigation is that it's nonstop excitement, local private investigators like Means say that much of the work is tedious.

It requires a lot of patience and common sense, Means said. 'It's got to be in your blood. You don't think it's neat when you're sitting there for 12 to 15 hours watching day turn to night.'

But many PIs — a field expected to grow 18 to 26 percent through 2014 — don't conduct surveillance anymore because many investigative cases aren't the lurk-in-the-shadows variety the public typically thinks of."

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