Investigators retrace lives of unclaimed dead
LOS ANGELES — Arusyak Martirosyan struggles to open the door of a stranger’s onebedroom apartment overflowing with the belongings from a life lived but not claimed in death.
Wedged against the door is a giant box of Gain laundry detergent and plastic tubs piled high. Blouses and T-shirts, suspended by hangers over a living room curtain rod, block out almost all sunlight. Bins and boxes, brimming with more clothes, hide the carpet. Empty takeout containers and Tupperware, with bugs trapped inside, cover the stove.
The 74-year-old woman died in October in the hospital, and weeks later no one had come forward for her remains. Wearing a Tyvek protective suit and trailed by the building’s property manager, Martirosyan hunts for a greeting card or letter sent to her that could have a family member’s address on the return label — anything that would lead to a relative who could give the woman a proper burial.
Martirosyan acts as a living representative of those Los Angeles County calls “the unclaimed dead.” She is one of more than a dozen investigators who work for the Public Administrator, an understaffed and little-known branch of the county’s Department of the Treasurer and Tax Collector.
Her job is to unearth who the woman was beneath all her belongings and find out who she loved, who loved her and what she wanted after her death.
Martirosyan and her colleagues spend three years investigating a case before relinquishing the deceased to a communal gravesite, a last resort in the county cemetery. Similar work is done in cities across the U.S. but in Los Angeles, with one of the nation’s largest homeless populations, the efforts are particularly difficult.
It is a painstaking process to retrace a life. Investigators, who handle about 200 cases yearly, are given a manila file folder containing a name, birthdate and little else for each death.
“I go through their lives in so many ways,” Martirosyan said. “They do become mine.”
In the beginning, it’s a race against time. The person’s body lays frozen in the county morgue as the investigators scramble to find family before being forced to give the go-ahead to cremate the remains.
For weeks, they call nursing homes and houses of worship, scour public records and ancestry websites and comb through homes and apartments.
“We’re like stepping into the shoes of the dead person,” said Dennis Cotek, one of Martirosyan’s supervisors, who acknowledges he often thinks about the lives he has encountered even after going home for the day.
“I always say a little prayer for them,” he said.
The deceased may not have any surviving next-of-kin, or their loved ones can’t afford to pay for an individual burial. Other times, estranged relatives refuse to be involved or a friend is unable to petition a court to take possession of their remains.
Martirosyan, who has been on the job just more than a year, said her work has made her keenly aware of her own mortality and spurred tearful but important conversations with her teenage son.
“This is going to happen, in one way or another, to all of us,” she said.
That’s also what largely drives her and the rest of the army of public servants on their quest to bring dignity to tens of thousands of people who die alone in the most populous U.S. county. Their efforts culminate with a communal burial and a multilingual, interfaith ceremony, an event that has been held annually since 1896.
The most recent ceremony on Dec. 14 recalled the universal devastation and loneliness of the pandemic. The burial of 1,937 people included for the first time those who died from the coronavirus. Among the dead were immigrants, children and homeless people.
“We don’t know enough about the people we are burying today to really do them justice,” county supervisor Janice Hahn said.
Several dozen people, some wiping away tears, attended the outdoor ceremony as clergy members prayed over the communal grave in the county cemetery. Each laid a white rose at the gravesite.