Another convert is Sachiko Kobayashi. She lives in Sendai, a city at the heart of the tsunami zone, and was in Kesennuma looking for a friend, a fellow student in the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument. After Ms. Kobayashi posted a query on a separate Web site, a stranger directed her to Person Finder. There, she learned that her friend was alive.
There's a little trick to reading the New York Times, most commonly disaster reporting or any time the story takes place in conditions of extreme hardship: any time you see "a stranger", replace it with the reporter's name. They do it out of a perceived ethical stricture to avoid putting themselves in the center of the story.
After you know this exists, you'll see it a lot.