>. What do you think about an index on Middle Initial?

Assuming the list is not so large that last_first is fairly distinctive and assuming many of your middle names are single intitials or empty, the index is probably hurting you.

This is similarly to the argument for/against an index on deleted.
Consider a search on "John C. Smith". You have a "John C. Smith" and "John A. Smith". Bringing over the portion of the middle initial index that's "C." for the entire DBF, probably requires more bandwith than bringing over the wire and than excluding (what the Select does without the index) the extra record that matchs just last+first. This would be an example of where full optimization might not be the best thing.