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L.A. County Coroner: Names and Faces of the Dead
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3153 Reads
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 I think it was Joseph Conrad who once said, "We live as we dream - alone."
Every year in L.A. County, people die alone. When no one comes to claim their bodies, the L.A. County Department of the Coroner posts their particulars on the Unclaimed Persons List.
It's easy to look at the jokey kitsch of the coroner's Skeletons in the Closet - an online store selling T-shirts, jackets, beach towels, stationery and, um, "body bag"-styled garment bags "To those of us of dubious distinctive taste" - and forget the department's real, grim job:
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The Department of Coroner is responsible for the investigation and determination of the cause and manner of all sudden, violent or unusual deaths in the County I've watched a couple of autopsies in my day: Once you get over the stomach-churning sight of a coroner peeling someone's scalp down over their face and sawing open the skull to examine the brain, it's sort of like watching someone dismantle a machine. Without the soul, that's just a body, each part being carefully disassembled so the coroner can figure out what killed the soul that left its vessel long ago.
The experience is fascinating and deeply affecting - but somehow, not nearly so haunting as clicking around the coroner's Unclaimed Persons list has been tonight.
Browse through the database of unclaimed bodies, and you get a glimpse of one facet of the coroner's ineffably sad job: handling people who died without family.
This picture shows Ingeborg Margaret Acevedo, who died Oct. 11, 1999 in Glendale at the age of 71. Her photo, shown here, is preserved with her vital statistics, alongside the name of the coroner's officer working their case, just in case someone recognizes her and can help close it.
There are 3,824 more cases just like hers.
(Spotted at DailyNews.com)
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Sunday, November 20, 2005 - 11:54 PM
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