Contacting previous owners

[Sam Leon]

Not sure there is a perfect sub-forum for this question, I am trying to find emails and phone numbers of a previous owner of a property I am in the middle of renovating.

I know the name of the owner who owned the property from 1986-2011.  There have been two owners since, they don't know much.  He was responsible for most of the past renovations (some good some not so good).  Most of the "not so good" ones I had to find out the hard way, having spent extra time, effort and $ to be unpleasantly surprised.

I have already went through all the permits and old records looking at microfilms for hours at the city's archive office.

But I still have a lot of questions that I believe this person can answer.  Such as where is the location of the old septic tank before it was abandoned in 1986?  Where is the location of the newer septic tank when it was abandoned in 2005 to hook up to the city sewer?  What happened to this section of foundation wall on the old plans that doesn't see to exist today? Why do I dig down 8" from the ground and find a layer of old chicago bricks, is there a patio under there?  Where does this plugged up deck drain exits or daylights?  Is there a hidden opening to this section of crawlspace or is this completely sealed off after someone ran a 4" drain, EMT conduits and HVAC ducts through this 15"X15" access opening?  I can go on and on and on, but you get my point, he could really save me a lot of time.

So my questions for the members:

(1) Have you ever had to look up past owners contact information?  If so how.  Yes I know you can Google their names, and most of the time I get back some services that are "searching fifty billion records for John Smith 0..1..2..3%" and it's in a loop then search criminal then search social media then search this and that and after 5 minutes they ask for your credit card number.  Now I don't mind paying for info but I don't want to get on some databases that hijack my information.  I am not looking for the person's life history, I am only interested in emails and phone numbers.  If I google the name, it shows current address being the property that I am working on, and he's been gone since 2011 LOL.  Anyone know of a reputable online service to use?

(2) Would you call or email? I prefer to email because I don't want to surprised someone with a call. I had a bad experience once, I bought a property a few years back and it had a safe in it, I didn't have the combinations, I bought it from a bank via a REO, I did find the phone number of the owner, called and his wife answered. I told her who I was and just looking for information, and the wife said she is in the hospital and they just rolled him into the OR for an open heart surgery. Bad timing. She said she would call me back, but never did.

(3) If I do get in touch with the previous owner, and if he seems open to sharing information, do you think I should pay for his time?  In other words, ask him to come by the property and spend 30 minutes to get all the answers I need, and in exchange pay him something for his time.  Bear in mind he sold it via a short sale in 2011 so it wasn't a happy ending.