In search of a long lost friend: Degrees of separation

Friends come and go: it's a fact of life. People enter your life unexpectedly, things click and then before you realize it, they're gone. While I have a few friends, I have even fewer really close friends.
Every once in a while I think about the close friends I have had along the way and wonder how they are doing once our paths diverged. I have a few that I regularly try to look up on the Internet, usually with little luck. For instance, I found my friend Luis, who was a Spanish exchange student from my senior year in high school and have tried to get in touch with him. But to no avail, he has either not responded or I have not reached him properly. I sent him a message in Spanish, but I got no response. I contacted a fellow Couch Surfer (couchsurfing.com) who was located in Grenada, Spain, where I tracked him down working at a local newspaper. She agreed to look him up and deliver my message, but have not heard back. Oh well, maybe it's a hint.

Another friend I wondered about was a good friend at the University of Maryland. Steve and I lived on the same floor in Anne Arundel dorm and we had some really fun times together. We did a lot of fun, offbeat and cheesy things together.
Steve was a year ahead of me and had a single, which I thought was immediately cool coming in as a freshman. But he wasn't the standoffish snob that other single residents seemed to be. I remember enjoying hanging out with him and I felt I could be me.
Steve was a RTVF major (radio TV film) and one day he asked me to be a subject in one of his projects. He took me around the area to several spots and filmed several sequences of me running away from some unknown menace. When I drive through those areas, I think about it.

Confession #1: I remember one evening we went on a quest to find cool dorm wall trophies: the ubiquitous Road Sign. We donned black/camouflage clothes and went out around the campus in search of something to bring back -- and sure enough, we did -- one stop sign and the (I think) women's sign from the bathroom of some building. We added it to our collection of other signs we found or acquired.

I also remember us jumping up on a coffee table in my dorm and lip syncing to Huey Lewis.

Stuff like that.

Confession #2: Steve, my roommate and I once went to a drive-in movie theater. We didn't want to pay per person, so I climbed in the trunk of the car while we went through the gate. Big deal? Well, it was an X-rated movie. LOL!

A couple of weeks ago I looked Steve up again and thought I'd try to filter through the dozens of folks out there with the same first and last name as his and any derivation of Steve. There were quite a few. I was able to find some good candidates, but no phone numbers or emails. But I did find one that was in the entertainment industry on the production side of the camera. I tried to figure a way to reach him, but there just was no way I could figure out how to break in -- it was like there was an information barrier. I even got a hold of an agent of one of the actor/producers who worked with him on a project-- but I left that conversation thinking she thought I was a loony.

I mentioned this to my wife, who is in the last days of her job at a start-up cable TV network. She said to let her see if she can look him up through some of the channels she has. She called me up today with what I hope is great news: She found a producer named Roger who worked with him on a project. He called me up and after filling a bit of background information he said that the Steve he knows is definitely the one I have been looking for. He said he'd look for his number and give him a call.

I hope this one pans out. (film pun intended)