I SPY: P.I.'s life is like a movie

Frank Military has lived the kind of life most people just see in movies. The Las Vegas resident has owned night clubs and hotels, written books, produced alternative-health videos and operated his own private investigation company.

Military's beginnings were rough. The New York native was a poster child for polio and didn't learn to walk until he was 9. When he did begin walking, he went to work delivering bread before school and shining shoes after. When he was a bit older, he caddied during daylight hours and set up bowling pins by night.

At 15, Military went to stay with his grandfather in Manhattan, N.Y.

"The school I was supposed to go to was P.S. (I forget the number), and the stairs were oh my ga... My grandpa looked at the stairs and he said in broken English 'You lucky I cannot climb those stairs. If I coulda climb those stairs you would go to school, so you go to work.' "

The young boy was taken to the Daily Mirror, where his grandfather got him a job as a delivery boy.

"I was making $26.92 a week and I'll tell you how I remember that so vividly. It used to come in a little brown envelope attached with a paperclip," Military said.

At the end of every week, his grandfather would shake out the envelope, give Military the 92 cents and keep the $26.

From the delivery boy job, he his made his way up the corporate ladder to the job of reporter's assistant. The Irish reporter he worked for would hang out in bars looking for news tips, while the cub reporter waited in the car listening to the police scanner.

The team worked the midtown Broadway beat where Military investigated the murder of a starlet whose story was later told in the movie "The Matchbook Murder Case."

Eventually, Military decided to return to his family on Long Island, but he didn't know how he would find the money for the trip. The day he was ready to leave, his grandfather presented him with every pay envelope the youth had ever earned. The kid had underestimated his grandpa and he knew it.

Back on Long Island, Military worked a variety of jobs. He got a job serving papers for a local attorney and worked as a stand-up comic. Then he and three buddies bought a night club and then a hotel.

That was only the first hotel Military worked with. He's helped operate hotels in Haiti and the Bahamas and he ran a casino in the Dominican Republic, and a nightclub in Arizona.

For awhile Military ran a talent management office on 57th Street in New York.

"I managed a lot of acts. Dee Clark, Barbara McNair, Alan Dell and a lot of people who never made it -- comedy acts and the like. I had a guy from England -- his name was Johnny Eager, he did 10 royal command performances and he came to this country," Military said. "He was making $65 a weekend and I got him up to $5,000 a week. He was 29 years old, he had lung cancer and he died. He would have been a big, big star. He would have been like Tom Jones. He was the best."

Before his death, Eager hadn't said a word for six months when his wife saw Military on TV. She looked at her husband and said "Johnny, Johnny, look it's Frankie, he's on TV." Eager looked up and said, " 'Tell him I love him' and that's all he ever said," Military recalls.

"I just totally gave up the business after that," Military said. "I had the best and I knew it's like once in a lifetime you wind up with someone like that. So I concentrated on investigative work after that."

Eventually, Military ended up in California, a state he loved.

"Between the smog and the fog, there were no stars in the sky. They were all on the sidewalk," he said.

In California, Military started a private investigation practice he still runs from his Hollywood office.

When a certain television celebrity was nabbed with his sweetheart in Stockholm a few months back, it was Military's agent who caught the culprit, but it was the guy's wife who alerted the tabloids.

"It was in all the rags," Military said.

The investigator doesn't rely on the Internet or e-mail to solve cases, instead he uses classic techniques like phony telephone calls, authorized telephone taps and good old-fashioned surveillance. Military pulled out a set of foot-long binoculars to demonstrate.

"You may not see me, but I can see you. With these things no one can see me coming," he warned.

Along the way, Military has picked up other professions that started as hobbies. He produced a video documentary series titled "Staying Alive with Cancer, the Alternative Way."

The eight-part series features in-depth interviews with non-traditional health providers fighting cancer in clinics around the world. He pays special attention to the cancer clinics that have popped up all over Tijuana, Mexico. He and his wife, JoAnn Military, compiled their findings into a cancer fighter's book. The videos and book are available through Military's Web site at www.frankmilitary.com.

On a less serious note, Military filmed a television video series called "Cooking with the Stars," a true Las Vegas series with guest chefs like Lance Burton, Norm Crosby and Bernie Allen. The cooking videos aren't available here, but they sell to customers all over in Japan.

Through it all, Military kept his hand in investigation. He worked as an investigator for attorney Melvin Belli for more than seven years and never charged the lawyer a dime.

"He would refer me to all his clients and they only knew two things about me -- that I was good and that I was expensive," Military said.

Many of Military's clients are celebrities, but through the nonprofit International Society for Private Investigators, he has picked up quite a few pro-bono cases, primarily when kidnapping is involved. He received one of a handful of non-military purple hearts for his efforts searching for (and finding) kidnapped children. So far, he's never had an unsolved case.

Now semi-retired, Military is working on a talk-radio show and an Internet site he calls P.I. Stories. The site, packed with real stories from private investigators, can be found at pistories.com.