From time to time, I will post interviews with friends of Evan Ratliff. These should provide clues to where he's likely to go, and how you'll likely find him. The first is with Jeffrey O'Brien of Fortune. He is a close friend of Evan's and used to be his editor at Wired.
Wired: How well do you know Evan?
O'Brien: We worked together for 3 or 4 years. We met when he was a fact checker at Wired and I was editing features. As he advanced at the magazine, I became his editor and we developed a relationship. We're pretty close and we get together at least every couple weeks.
Wired: When you do that, what do you do?
O'Brien: We get drinks and burgers. One thing people should know is that, if they get close to him, he won’t be drinking beer. He can't because of his celiac disease. he'll be drinking cheap wine and eating a burger without a bun.
Wired: Tell me some of things he likes.
O'Brien: He likes soccer. He also plays the banjo and the keyboard. We have never gone out to see live music together. But I suspect that, if he has some time to kill, he might go to a show.
Wired: And what sort of places does he like to go?
O'Brien: I know that his parents have a beach house in the Florida Panhandle. He can't go there, because the rules say he won't stay with or visit his parents. But he's often talked lavishly about white sand beaches. He and his dad used to go fishing, and he talks about those trips as his ultimate vacation.
__Wired:__Do you think he's going to slip up and get caught?
O'Brien: I know that $3,000 of the $5,000 prize comes out of his story fee. But you need to think about how badly people really want to disappear. He didn't commit a crime or have a breakup. He's just someone who wants a great story. I know he cares about that sort of thing, and I remember him giving up a pretty lucrative job out of college. He was working in Amsterdam as some kind of an analyst. Was on the fast track to making more than you can make as a journalist. He gave that up to be a fact checker and then he worked his way up at Wired. I think that he is probably more motivated on the thrill of the chase and the potential for a great story than he is just by getting away.
In the early going, he’s not going to completely disappear. I think that he probably wants to stay closer to a population center. He won't want it to be absolutely impossible.
And, as he writes in the piece, people get sloppy. I don't think he will be purposefully sloppy and I think that he has a pretty good attention to detail. But I think that he'll be dropping clues, whether on purpose or unwittingly.
__Wired:__Do you have any idea where he is?
O'Brien: No. The day before he left, we watched the Mexico-U.S. soccer match in town, and he told me that he was leaving the next day. But he didn't say anything about where. He was driving his hunter green Honda. But he told me that he was going through a move and selling that car. But he certainly hadn't sold it yet.
People should know that he's grown a beard. It's even fuller than it was in that photograph you posted of him at the wedding. He's not the kind of guy who can grow a beard in three days: He's not Jim Morrison in his hefty days. He also has grown out his hair. It's now longish and wavy.
__Wired:__What does he like to wear?
O'Brien: He's a pretty casual guy. A little bit schlumpy. He has a san Francisco style. Jeans, t-shirt. I would look for some kind cleverly ironic t-shirt.
__Wired:__He grew up in Atlanta and went to Duke. Is he a real southerner?
O'Brien: Well, he was born and bred in Atlanta. If there's Chick-fil-A around, you might grab him. He's so much a fan that his apartment was adorned in Chick-fil-A posters. Things that said stuff like "Eat more fowl."
He doesn't really have an accent, though I don't know if he worked on that. I don’t think though that he has any really strong ties to the South. He's a big fan of Alabama Crimson Tide football and he's also a fan of Georgia Tech. We are fast approaching the beginning of college football season. That would definitely be something that he would be watching.
__Wired:__Is he a night or daytime kind of guy?
O'Brien: He's almost nocturnal. He's been working as a freelancer for a long time. There have been occasions where he's pulled all-nighters and he would go back home and work after a late dinner. He had a blog post a few weeks ago about how Monday nights in New York always turn into Thursday nights.
__Wired:__Anything else?
O'Brien: He lived in Hawaii for about six months. I know that he recently went to Maui. He's really into ultimate Frisbee. And he has, over the last couple years, become a pretty big Boston Red Sox fan. I know that he really wanted to go to a wedding in late August that he's going to miss. Maybe that'll cause him to get sloppy. Also, he's a voracious reader and is always carrying some dog-eared old paperback with him. That's not the kind of habit he could curb easily. So look for a guy who walks into a bar with a book and orders bad red wine and chicken wings or a burger with no bun.
