Tech tools aid search for missing San Francisco man

A local software engineer vanished on Halloween and his friends and co-workers are frantically looking for him. They're using some high-tech tools to try to find 26-year-old Dan Ha who was last seen leaving his apartment at Brannan and 4th in San Francisco.

The effort to find Ha has been happening online and in his neighborhood into the night. The search will resume at Brannan and 4th at 3 p.m. Saturday. People are even coming in from other Bay Area cities to help. It's a tight tech community searching for one of its own.

Ha's roommates and friends are passing out fliers at their apartment near Brannan and 4th Street. It's where the 26-year-old software engineer was last seen and where he apparently went offline.

"We need multiple people around the SOMA District, whether you're a startup, whether you're a tech company. Most importantly, 24 Hour Fitness, that was the last place we got a ping from his phone," friend Genesis Kim said.

The roommates say Ha did not say where he was going when he walked out of the apartment last Friday around 8 p.m.

"It wasn't until Tuesday when we got a call from his parents that we started to get worried," roommate Steve Liu said.

They reached out to Ha's employer, MetroMile. CEO Dan Preston told ABC7 News he went home with a migraine Thursday and didn't come in at all Friday.

"Looking back, he certainly was a little quieter than normal, and maybe there were some red flags there, but it wasn't necessarily apparent. He's always been a pretty quiet guy, a bit reserved, one of the smartest people I know," Preston said.

Ha's friends in tech have created a Find Dan Ha Facebook page and website.

They're raising money through Tilt and Venmo to help Ha's parents make the trip from Canada. And there's one more piece of technology the friends decided to try.

"We found out he was using a dating app and the CEO of that particular app was able to message everyone using the app," Liu said. "I hope that he comes home safely and gets mad at us for invading his space."

Police are investigating and ask anyone with information to call them.