thank you so muchI posted the California cases, pages 10 through 20....
Raine
thank you so muchI posted the California cases, pages 10 through 20....
Hi All:
I talked to my contact at the Spokane ME's office tonight.
First of all, she thanks us for all our hard work. It has been very helpful.
She is particularly thankful that in several of the cases we have worked on that we have identified as veterans. They have verified our information as correct (well, of course!) and the defense department (or veteran's administration, not sure of the agency) is going to have these bodies moved to the veteran's cemetery with full military honors. They do not have a date for this yet, but are planning right now to move them all at once. I feel very proud of all of us that we have contributed to getting our unclaimed their proper respect for their service to our country.
The reason that she hasn't responded to my requests lately is that she has been too busy with homicide investigations and unidentified bodies to work on unclaimed. Unclaimed is only a small part of her responsibility, so we have to be patient. Some of the unidentified will being entered into namus.
However, she has all the information we have sent and will get to it when she can. I should continue sending her the information and being her point of contact.
I want to emphasize again: NO ONE BUT THE ME's office in Spokane is to contact an unclaimed's family. She continues to stress the importance of this to me on the phone. I have said we will play by the rules.
The Spokane office is having issues with claimus right now. There has been a change in personnel. The new claimus person responsible for the Spokane area is not very responsive to the ME's request to update. In addition, even though we are finding that close family members know about the death, if the body is unclaimed, the ME's office is struggling with how to notate that in claimus. They have seen several cases where perhaps brothers and sister, etc. may know, but someone such as a grandchild may come forward later to claim the body. So, we need to be patient while they sort this all out.
As I said above, I am proud to work in the unclaimed thread and proud of the entire group. We are doing good and important work.
Thank you. Let's keep up the good work! Hugs. Nm