Jim Sanders, an investigative journalist, is a retired Seal Beach, California, police investigator who specialized in crash scene investigations and forensic investigations. He retired after an on-the-job injury. He became an investigator specializing specifically in missing US military personnel, POW/MIAs from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and his research resulted in two co-authored books: Soldiers of Misfortune and The Men We Left Behind. Sanders was also part of the investigation into the savings and loan financial collapse in the 1980s and '90s. He was working on a third book when the crash of TWA Flight 800 completely changed his life.