> Of all the people I've gotten random chat requests from, they've all been from the area near me, so I suspect that when you go to find a "random chat" person it automatically finds someone from nearby as your details suggest - because I know that for others this has been the case too, so if not then the probability of those cases I've heard of occurring coincidentally would be astronomically low!

I think you're right, I had a similar experience a while back. I got an ICQ message out of the blue one evening from a girl who lives fairly close to me. I asked her how she found me, and she said she did a Whitepages search for the Interest "Cross Country". I'm a runner, and it's listed in my profile, along with the state I live in, so that's how she came up with me.