EL PASO COUNTY — Measuring the best and worst days at work for Dr. Leon Kelly is nearly impossible.

As a coroner, his business is death; and it means meeting families at the worst time of their lives.

“I always joke that that compartmentalization is essentially the forensic superpower,” Kelly said.

With two years left in his current term, Kelly will leave his elected post at the start of the year at the end of the year.

“It’s a, it’s an end of an era, a resignation and a new phase, I think, both for me and for the office,” Kelly said, “I think it’s time to move on to other things.”

Recent years have not come without many mass tragedies in the Pikes Peak region. From the pandemic, mass shootings and the Return to Nature’s Undertaker investigation.

“It was a little bit of the best of times and the worst of times, because those darkest moments were always the moments that we shone too, which is strange to think about. But the reality is that’s what we do here,” Kelly said.

His plan is to teach at a medical school in Colorado and perform autopsies as an independent contractor. El Paso County Commissioners will name his replacement.

“This job reminds you every day that no moment is guaranteed, anything can happen to anyone at any time,” Kelly said.

In an office not typically known for being publicly confrontational, Kelly has used his title over the past few years to shape policy, including even the laws that dictate who might ultimately run to replace him.

Previously, Colorado law only required coroner candidates to be 18 years old, not a felon, have a high school diploma and live in the county they preside over.

A new law passed in 2024 now requires candidates from larger counties like El Paso to be either a board-certified forensic pathologist or a certified death investigator.

“Having done this job for 17 years, the first day you take it, something bad is going to happen, probably a lot of bad things are going to happen, and we don’t have time to figure it out. In order for you to learn on the job, you have to know what you’re doing,” Kelly said.

Kelly said he has accomplished key goals he set out when he was first elected in 2018. Not only are policies changing, but his goal has been to use data and information collected from the office coroner to help inform the community.

“We never do an autopsy on the deceased, she is dead, she is gone. We do them because what we learn helps the living,” Kelly said.

Kelly said there will be times when family members don’t want autopsies done, he said having those conversations with families about the impact of collecting this information is one of the most meaningful parts of his job.

“To me, the value of the work that we do and the time and the energy and the personal sacrifice and the trauma and the pain that you go through in this position, it’s not worth it unless you’re going to do something. with that information,” Kelly said.

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