by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Robert Lindblad

Age: 44

Occupation: Psychic

Bio: Even though this hearty Verdun resident has always been able to identify people trying to reach him on the phone before they announce themselves, he never really considered himself to be psychic until age 29, when a friend had him perform a series of psychic exercises and promptly pointed out the obvious. Upon said realization, Robert says he “immediately went, ‘Wow, I’ve got to go find missing kids,’” and started up his current activities the very same day. “It was automatic. I knew right then that this is what I needed to do.” Today, he figures he spends about 18 hours a day using his psychic gifts to locate kids across the globe, and claims to have solved over 1,700 cases. If your little darling happens to have gone walkabout, you can reach Robert at childsearchpsychic.tripod.com. His service is absolutely free. “I don’t want anyone to ever think they couldn’t afford to call me for help.”

Did people start doubting his sanity when, at age 29, he announced to all that he was starting a new life as a psychic who finds missing children? Definitely. “But why would I just start doing something like this? And then I heard on the radio of this missing girl in Calgary, and they said her name, and I knew right away, I saw her, she was being held in a construction site right at that moment, being raped and about to be murdered by some guy. So I kept phoning the police telling them they’d better get to this site right away, but they just laughed at me. The next day, this girl was found dead in a construction site.”

Has he ever gone psychically searching for some missing teen and found her alive and masturbating wildly in the bathtub, and if so, will psychic images give him a boner? “Nothing like that’s ever happened.”

If he’s so successful finding missing persons, why don’t the police just automatically forgo their own investigations and call him up, wouldn’t that make life a lot easier for them? “The police never call me. I tell them to, but they don’t. If the police start telling parents, ‘Hey, don’t call us, call this long-haired hippie guy in Montreal watching The Simpsons,’ they won’t look as good. They’ve got to keep up appearances. But when police do listen, it’s wound up saving lives. I’ve never been wrong. Never. I’ve found bodies of children everywhere, underwater in lakes, in forests, in homes.”

How he pays the bills: Welfare. “If I was busy doing other things, I’d be missing out on saving lives.”

If he’s so psychic, why doesn’t he just pick a few winning loto numbers and live off the government that way? “Look, I’m so used to living off beans and rice now, it really doesn’t matter.”

Where he hangs: Foufs.

Musical preferences: ELP, Rush.

Last book read: No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugerman.

Words of wisdom: “Money means nothing in the afterlife, so you should never let it influence you to do something bad or stop you from doing something good.”

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