total mail search

hi all....here's my problem: i have thousands of emails in my gmail. some time ago a friend told me about another friend i knew in high school and i am fuzzy about what was mentioned. i sure don't want to read all my emails one by one, so i was hoping to find a program that would go through my mail searching for the name of my friend...it would be in the body of the letter, and not the heading... i don't even know how to word a web search for this!! is there such a beast? can anyone help me? thanks!!

 

that search just finds the subject or heading....here's what i need : someone wrote to me about a guy i use to know. i forget if they said he was dead or alive. i don't remember who wrote. i want to enter my friend's name in a search and have it go through each email one-by-one until it finds that name. is there such a tool?

 

ok...i went to search mail and put in our mutual contacts and got a short list of mail which was doable to search by eye....found what i wanted! but still...is there such a search tool as i was asking about?
thanks for your help!!