Chief Coroner Deirdre Amaro (left) and Chief Coroner Investigator Cory Russo (right) on a media tour of the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office on Nov. 14, 2024 (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch)

Dr. Deirdre Amaro sometimes thinks about how her office is perceived by people who may not be familiar with death investigations.

Her workspace at the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office has the expected fluorescent lighting, cool hallways which connects coolers with the capacity to hold up to 12 or 70 bodies and an overwhelmingly strong smell.

The office also has a full-scale X-ray machine, adorned with big, noisy eyes and affectionately known as Larry, a skeleton model with its own employee ID, and a spreadsheet to divide the responsibility of watering the many plants placed on high windowsills.

The Utah Medical Examiner’s Office, which Amaro has led ever since this summerinvestigates all sudden, unexpected, violent, suspicious or unattended deaths in the state by conducting post-mortem examinations and autopsies to explain the illnesses or injuries that may have caused them. The office opened its doors to news organizations last week to show how this unique organization affects Utahns.

Do they work with death because they’re a bunch of “awkward weirdos”? Partly, yes, Amaro said. However, more than 90% of their work, the part where they collect data that is then reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is aimed at helping the living.

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“Death certificate data becomes a reflection of the health of a community. We are literally seeing the end results of public health issues here. Drugs? This is a problem that kills people. We see that here,” Amaro said. “And if we can understand what’s killing people in our community and why, then maybe we can figure out how to prevent it. And that’s what we’re about, not just little elves under the bridge.”

While CSI TV shows are cool, they’re slightly inaccurate, Amaro said. Most people assume her team mostly investigates murders, she said. In reality, most of their work focuses on ways of dying; natural and accidents.

Natural deaths monitored by the practice could be either an elderly person who has not been under the care of a doctor for a long time and dies suddenly, or a young athlete who suddenly collapses on the field due to an undiagnosed heart condition. And, accidents include car accidents and drug overdoses.

The way these death investigations work in Utah is different compared to other states that have elected coroners, who are not necessarily required to be medical doctors or forensic pathologists. Utah has a centralized office with highly trained doctors who must be licensed.

In Utah, according to CDCthe leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer, accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, COVID-19, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, diabetes, suicide and nutritional deficiencies.

Most of the cases the office receives, Amaro said, are natural causes of death, then accidents, then suicides, and below that is homicide.

“It’s pretty much the same across the country,” she said.

Office life

Work at the Medical Examiner’s Office is often hard. A buzzer alerts staff about 15 to 20 times a day when a new deceased is about to enter the building, and they often see the finish line of someone’s death.

Although it is a daily occurrence, they do not take their responsibility lightly.

“It’s very important to me to go to someone’s house on the worst day of their life, to really be able to manage their emotions carefully and have empathy for these people at that worst time,” the investigator said Thursday. Chief Medical Examiner Cory Russo. . “And then to go back and do the follow-up work, whether it’s a positive identification after someone has been missing for years, it’s so rewarding to be able to bring closure to families.”

In addition to 12 forensic pathologists, with some specialties including pediatrics and neuropathology, the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office has a team of forensic epidemiologists who focus on suicide, overdose and prevention efforts.

Suicide, for example, is one of the most prevalent causes of death the office sees. In 2022, Utah ranked 7th in the nation for suicide mortality rates. Epidemiologists help the team make sense of this data.

“We can say this person killed themselves with a gun, but (epidemiologists) can tell you what the circumstances were around that death,” Amaro said. “So if we figure out why, why so many people are killing themselves in Utah, then maybe we can fix that, and that motivates me and that motivates most of us in this office.”

The facility also has space dedicated to DonorConnect, a nonprofit organization that connects, with family authorization, tissue donors with recipients, including veins, long bones, skin and corneas, explained Brandon Callor, manager of mortuary operations at the state office.

“There is a window of time (where they) are still viable and can recover those tissues,” Callor said of the nonprofit. While in other states, those tissues may have to travel for hours, missing out on a lot of potential donors.

Aside from that service, another rewarding aspect of the job, Callor said, is the perspective it provides. Also a social worker, he said he finds purpose in interviewing people who have lost loved ones to suicide or drug overdose to determine solutions outside the autopsy suite, including advocating for legislation to help the public who may be at risk and helping some families with their grief.

“I don’t think I could feel sorry for myself for a very long time when I realized there was so much suffering out there,” Callor said. “And so being able to be involved in helping someone else’s suffering helps me gain that perspective and think outside the box.”

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