This is part one of a two-part series.

At the age of 39, my oldest sibling, Alexandrea Suzanne Cook Porter, went missing. It wasn’t until over 30 years later when I picked up Jodie Picoult’s latest novel, “Leaving Time,” that I inadvertently discovered the first clue that led me to the whereabouts of my long- lost sister.

The family: Mother, myself, and my younger sister, Libby, along with a few close friends, took steps over the years to find my missing sister, but to no avail. For all intents and purposes she simply disappeared off the face of our earth and for years, especially after our mother died, Libby and I thought Suzy had long since passed too. We talked about having a private memorial service in absentia but never seemed to muster the courage. Over the decades, I prayed about it and often asked the powers that be for something—anything that would lead to finding my sister. What happened to her? I wanted to know. If she was no longer living then I wanted closure for myself, and what was left of the family.

Unbeknownst to me, when I walked out of the library with Picoult’s book there was within the first fifty pages what I was looking for—a good, solid clue. The story is about a 13 year old girl who lost her mother when she was an infant. The young girl decides to look for her mother and the first place she looks is on the Social Security Death List. There’s a death list? I asked. Who knew? After reading that short informative paragraph, I looked it up. And yes, there really is a Social Security Death List—that’s where I found my sister.

Suffice it to say that the Social Security guards our private information with impregnable armor and unless you have a social security number, show detailed information about your family connection, and make a personal appearance, by law they hold tightly to it. I didn’t have a social security number, but I did have the rest, and that was enough to start sleuthing.

After a long, nervous wait at the Mt. Vernon Social Security office I was able to get two bits of vital information: 1) Confirmation that the woman listed on the death list was indeed my sister and 2) she had passed in 2007 in the state of Washington at the age of 64.

It took a few minutes for that to sink in. The very last thing we had heard years ago was that Suzy lived in Minnesota—but Washington? Libby and I were both in Washington in 2007, the year she passed. We could have been there for her and would have if only we’d known. I promptly got online to the Washington State Vital Statistics site. There I found her name and ordered a death certificate.

As you may know a death certificate contains pertinent information about the deceased: When and where they died, cause of death, and where the remains were taken. All information I sorely needed. When the certificate came I immediately ripped open the envelope and found she had died in Tacoma from complications of MS, a disease she’d been diagnosed with at the age of 25. Still standing in the post office, I called the funeral home where, eight years earlier, her remains were taken.