Virginia has started to subpoena cellphone companies to track down some of the worst offenders for non-payment of child support.

Within the last three weeks, the Virginia Department of Social Services has issued subpoenas to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cingular, Alltel, Ntelos, and Nextel, according to Nick Young, director of child support enforcement for Virginia.

"You can run, you can hide, but by the way, the next phone call you get could be from a child support worker who says, 'Hi, we know who you are, and we know where you live,'" Young said.

Though cellphone companies routinely receive subpoenas from law enforcement agencies, Young said he was not aware of any other state agencies that had subpoenaed cellphone companies to try to track down people who are delinquent with child support payments. It was not possible to independently verify that assertion, however.

Essentially, the Department of Social Services issued the subpoenas looking for any information that might be out there about some of its worst - and hardest to locate - offenders.

"We're looking for people we have no address or telephone number for," said Connie White, child support systems project director for the Virginia Department of Social Services. The agency doesn't even know whether they have a cellphone, or if they do, which company it might be with.

Young said the plan has already yielded impressive results. He said he has seen about a 20 percent success rate in obtaining information such as addresses and phone numbers from the companies.

"When you ring their cellphone number, a phenomenal thing happens," Young said. "They pick up and say, 'hello?'"

The Department of Social Services began issuing the 48 subpoenas pertaining to high-priority child delinquent child support cases to each of the companies in June. Two of those delinquent cases are from the Roanoke district, which extends from Clifton Forge to Radford. Those two offenders owe a combined $19,000 in child support, according to White.

Young says he plans to continue the plan aggressively, subpoenaing information from cellphone companies twice a month. He jokes that everyone over the age of 4 has a cellphone, and also says people move around and change plans a lot.

But issuing subpoenas takes time, even though the Department of Social Services can issue administrative subpoenas and is not required to go to court. Ideally, Young would like to work out an arrangement like the Department of Social Services already has with more than 200 Virginia companies to share data.

Entities that share information with the Virginia Department of Social Services include financial institutions, the Department of Motor Vehicles, utility companies, the state police and other entities, White said. The Department of Social Services is entitled to the information under state and federal law, Young said.

That way, the Department of Social Services does not have to go through the process of having a subpoena served on every cellphone company it would like to get information from. Young acknowledged, however, that some companies had customer privacy concerns about sharing data without a subpoena or court order.

Spokesmen for the cellphone companies who were reached for comment said generally that though they comply with subpoenas and court orders, they are protective of their customers' privacy and don't envision turning information over without them. And one civil libertarian thinks businesses are already too quick to turn over information to government agencies in the post-9/11 era.

From the subpoenas the Department of Social Services has sent so far, the agency has received 92 responses with information. From that, they got about 19 "hits" for correct address or telephone number information for people the agency was looking for, Young said.

Currently in Virginia, child support enforcement officials are looking for some 140,000 people. The agency is trying to locate either the people or their assets, White said. The Roanoke district has about 8,000 cases, White said.

Spokesmen for Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile were not able to verify on Tuesday whether their companies had received the subpoenas from the Virginia Department of Social Services or whether the companies have had cellphone records subpoenaed before in connection with child support enforcement cases.

"Obviously, customer privacy issues come into play, but we always work with authorities," said Tom Matthews, a spokesman for Sprint. "When there is a legitimate request from law enforcement, we obviously comply with the subpoena."

But John Whitehead, director of the civil libertarian Rutherford Institute, said that though he's against deadbeat dads, he thinks most companies too readily provide information without a court order.