THE STAKEOUT ARTIST WICHITA DETECTIVE SPENDS HOURS DOCUMENTING KANSANS WHO CHEAT THEIR COMPANIES AND MATES. Nikola Maria Zytkow, The Wichita Eagle

He looks nothing like Sherlock Holmes or Mike Hammer. No dark glasses, fake mustaches or long trench coats for this guy. Sporting gray shorts, a T-shirt and L.A. Gear tennis shoes, Don Branda sits in a large brown van, binoculars by his side, a high-tech voice pager strapped to his pocket. In his wallet, a business card reads: "Donald Branda: The Effective Detective." Alongside his name is a caricature of Branda - a bearded man, with a fedora covering his dark curly hair. "It's an oddball job. You're working when most people are at home," said Branda, his eyes fixed on a building he'd been watching for a couple of hours. This is a routine stake-out for Branda, a former high school history teacher and one of 370 licensed private investigators in Kansas. "We've been watching this guy for about three weeks now," said Branda. "The guy," Branda explained, is a former employee of a Wichita business. After quitting, the man set up his own business, in direct competition with his former employer. Branda said the former employer had spent more than $3,000 to find out about the new competition. "They want to know who he's talking to and what he's doing with his time. "It seems the last week he's done nothing but play golf."

For Branda, sitting in the air-conditioned van, listening to KDGS-FM 93.9 and occasionally lifting up the pair of binoculars is a plus in a business full of risks. "I've had people chase me, run me off the road, pull guns on me, yell and scream at me," Branda said. "People don't like to be stalked." But "stalking" - or surveillance, as Branda likes to call it - is all part of a job he's done for the past 13 years. A job that, although hectic - Branda often works 15 hours a day - is also very profitable. Branda Detective Agency, which has four employees, has revenues of $250,000 a year.

Branda is bombarded daily with requests to spy on mates or check on employees whose companies are suspicious of their activities, or to find long-lost relatives and friends. "Very few neighborhoods are without some action," Branda said. Increasingly, the action is of a domestic nature, spawned by what Branda suspects is the latest talk-show craze of busting cheating spouses or lovers. Recent topics such as "What's Your Man Doing When You're Not Looking" feature scorned mates, armed with videotaped evidence, confronting their cheating honeys on national television. The shows may plant ideas in the minds of viewers, but, Branda said, people don't usually call on a whim. "Something is wrong either sexually or financially," he said. Suspicions arise. The hubby's had one too many late lunches or the occasional girl's night out has turned into a nightly habit. "They've tried to get the truth out of their spouse. They tried to follow them on their own, gone through wallets, purses, talked to friends, co-employees. "Ninety percent of the time when they hire us, they're right about their suspicions," he said. Whether it's at a Boeing parking lot, by the banks of the Arkansas River, at night behind Coleman Junior High School or at a local no-tell motel, Branda said the guilty party eventually gets caught. That was the case with the Wichita woman who called Branda, frantic that her husband was cheating on her. "She didn't want to leave him, she just wanted him followed," Branda said. So Branda waited and watched off and on for a year. He followed the husband to Kansas City - on a supposed business trip. Confirming the wife's suspicions, Branda watched the husband picking up his new girlfriend, taking her out to dinner, then whisking her away to a nearby motel. The husband, caught up in his rendezvous, didn't even notice Branda sitting in the hotel hallway, a camera at his side. Snap, snap.
The pictures of the unsuspecting couple were handed over to the wife.

Another one of Branda's cases turned out to be a similar situation, different location - the husband and the "other woman" at 4 in the afternoon in a Boeing parking lot. Branda sat 200 yards from the parked car. "They were making out, and they just didn't care," Branda said. "I could have been right next to them and they wouldn't have noticed." Most people, in fact, do not notice. "Ninety-nine percent of the people are unsuspecting," he said. "Most people, when they're doing wrong, aren't looking over their shoulder. "If I can follow someone in this big of a van, that kind of tells you most people can be followed," he said.

And what do his clients do with the videotaped evidence? "Usually they've already filed for divorce and they just want to justify it," Branda said. Because Kansas is a no-fault divorce state, the evidence gathered by Branda is strictly for the information of his clients. Branda said clients often want to involve him in more than just the investigation. "They tell me way more than I want to know," Branda said, laughing, adding that he often feels like an underpaid therapist: "A psychiatrist gets paid $80 and I only get $35" an hour. Whether it's counseling people or spying on them, Branda said he feels no guilt about his profession. "It's all out in public," he said. "We're not listening to their phone conversations. We're not going through their mail. "If people were a little more sneaky about it, maybe they wouldn't get caught."

Branda admits the daily cat-and-mouse pursuits induce "a certain high." He'll do almost anything not to lose the person he's following. "I'm not opposed to running red lights to catch up to people. I've run down the streets the wrong way before." Branda said his wife doesn't know half of the dangerous situations he puts himself in. A mischievous smile crept onto his face as he scribbled a few lines on a yellow notepad, his detective log. He uses it to document every hour spent on any particular case. For this particular case, he carefully recorded the license numbers of the new business' clientele. Using a database, it takes Branda five to 10 seconds to find out the name and address of the car's owner. For out-of-state tags, it could take three to five days.

Whether pursuing a domestic or corporate case, Branda usually needs some basic information to begin the investigation. He usually asks for a physical description, a license tag number, a description of the vehicle and a phone number. If that's not possible, an address and a name will do. Then he goes to work. He gets to know his subject's daily routine, what they do on their lunch breaks, what time they get off work and with whom they associate. This is often done with the help of neighbors - a fountain of information for Branda. Sometimes he identifies himself as a detective. But other times he doesn't tell them the whole story. "I'm the president, the delivery boy and the dispatcher," Branda said of some of the identities he assumes. He might, for example, walk up to a house and say that he's a delivery man with a package for their next-door neighbor who doesn't appear to be home. Do they know what time their neighbor is usually home? What's the best way to reach them, maybe at work? Oh, and by the way: What do they do for a living? Branda said he is still surprised that many neighbors don't care about identification and readily give him a myriad of information - especially if they don't like the neighbor in question. By law, Branda is prohibited from using an alias. But he said that as long as he doesn't attach an actual company name or any brand name to his title, he's OK. For this particular case, Branda will have to get a little more creative. "They'd like us to go in and pose as a future employee and look around. "It will be a little fishy since they just opened. So I'll probably go with the janitor's job," he said looking up toward the building. Nothing new.

"Looks like there's nothing going on here," he finally determined. He contemplated driving by the subject's house or going down to the golf course. Finally he checked his pager, scribbled down a few notes and started the van. "Every day is a new one," Branda said. "I try to forget them or I'd go crazy."

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