The Los Angeles County Coroner is housed in a 100-year-old building that's impossible to miss. With its brick red walls and sky high steps, it's as if you're stepping into another era when you arrive. The inside, with smooth burgundy colored couches and winding staircase, isn't any different.
Not many things shock me about L.A. anymore, but this building - and its inner workings were a sight to behold.
I met with Lt. David Smith, a coroner's investigator and spent almost 2 hours speaking with him about how bodies are handled, why so many remain unclaimed and how that is directly affecting operations at the L.A. County Coroners.
I left with significant numbers, and interesting angles that I had never even thought about before. For example, the Coroner regularly uses the DMV to match finger prints in order to identify people, however because of the poor quality of fingerprinting at the DMV, matching up the prints becomes close to useless.
i also learned about the financial strain the cremating of unclaimed bodies has left on the Coroner, after the L.A. County Morgue, who was taking care of the cremation, said they couldn't handle the influx anymore. The Coroner has had to hire private contractors to carry out the job, which has taken money from a virtually non existent budget.
(Interesting side note: most crematories cannot handle bodies over 300 lbs because of the fire hazard involved.)
After a morning at the Coroner's office, I left with more interest in this story than ever. There was so much more to discover and unravel, and although I had gotten facts, numbers and statistics, I was (and still am) chasing the human story, which seems difficult to find.
Because of confidentiality of records, it's difficult to get information on specific people who remain unclaimed or those still living that have had experience with locating next of kin. After putting out a call on Help a Reporter Out (HARO), I've made plans for a Craigslist ad asking for sources and I willbe doing my best with the social networking tools at my disposal to see if I can make a few connections.
I also had a brief conversation with unclaimedpersons.org, a volunteer organization of geneologists who helps various coroners locate next of kin. It was enlightening to say the least, and I hope to have more on that soon, but for now, off I go to find a few faces behind the facts.
Posted by Liana Aghajanian on 04/26/10
