Granite Investigations: Hunting the Truth

Michael Hahn is an equalizer…a doggedly determined hunter of facts, data, and sometimes, people. Mike is an award-winning writer of fact and fiction–a talent accompanied by powerful observational skills and the ability to see fine detail in mundane things. Quiet and unassuming, he takes discretion and resourcefulness to a fine art, able to fade into the background unobserved. He is a humanitarian by nature, which explains why he derives his greatest sense of purpose from helping people.

Granite Investigations LLC first came to be in the early 1990’s as Aquarius Investigations, when Michael was a full-time detective in a city of over a million people. With five mouths to feed, he worked many types of protection and investigative jobs after finishing his regular shift. By the time his 28-year public service career ended, he had fifty “hunters” working with him at the Department in the area of sex crime investigations. “We had some very smart, very bad people (to hunt down) and we were very good at it,” says Hahn.

One wonders why a small town like Groveland would need its own Private Investigator. Though Granite Investigations LLC’s license allows him to work anywhere in California, Michael is happy to have a base in Groveland, where many of his cases are more personal in nature (rather than working on behalf of insurance companies, for example). “Most folks luckily never have an urgent, personal need to talk with a P.I.,” said Hahn. “But my favorite cases are the private ones: reuniting adoptees with a loving birth family, trying to find a missing daughter, or helping someone become less afraid.”

Michael Hahn and Anya, his Anatolian Shepherd

Because most folks never have a need, it’s surprising to learn just how many types of services Granite Investigations provides. Services like verifying information, serving legal papers, surveillance, court research, consulting, or unraveling family mysteries. When you add re-investigating injury crash scenes, canvassing for witnesses, looking into possible fraudulent claims such as when a business accepts a bad check, even serving restraining orders to bullies, the total picture is not only impressive, but reassuring.

Still, Groveland seems rather remote for the former Harbormaster, who bought a home here while working for a large municipal marina in the Bay Area. When he retired full time in 2019, he made the move to Groveland permanent. Hahn loves sailboats and still keeps a “sleek wooden beauty” berthed on the San Francisco Bay. But the mountains and Pine Mountain Lake hold a special charm because he loves the view overlooking the lake, the proximity to the majestic mountains and rivers, and the people of our community which he describes as very cool and “defying compartmentalization.”

Michael’s humanitarian nature is evident not just through his client testimonials, but through his community service. Within days of reaching out to the Chamber of Commerce about membership, Hahn volunteered to exercise some of his writing talent as a regular “investigative journalist” for the Weekly. He also agreed to manage all the paperwork and permitting required for the annual 49er Festival. Resourceful and creative, with a decades-long background in government work (which requires boatloads of paperwork), Michael is already providing a tremendous service for our community’s most anticipated annual event. Thank you, Michael!

You can learn a lot working the streets in a big city and one of Michael Hahn’s “street grown” skills is speaking fluent Spanish. He just returned from his fifth journey to Guatemala with Faith in Practice, working as a medical translator. Traveling with a team of twenty doctors and support staff, his most recent trip was to Sanarate, El Progreso where he was partnered with Los Angeles E/R magician Dr. Ben Adams. Over the course of a week, they saw over three hundred people, making no-cost surgery referrals for the most serious problems to more than eighty patients.

With laser-focused observational skills, Hahn can’t help but see the magic, and at the same moment, the contrasting hardship. He has grown to love and respect the kind, hard working people of Guatemala. He sees his volunteer work, his “assignments,” as opportunities to meet interesting people in the context of interesting and challenging projects without necessarily a nexus to his Granite Investigations professional services. Yet, for Michael Hahn, the joy is in making things happen without expectations. “I like a little kindness in the hard world we all walk through together.”

Amen to that.

Granite Investigations LLC is a licensed private investigation service based in Groveland. California License Number 18754, You can reach Michael Hahn at 209-770-7798 and mh2276@gmail.cm.