His job: connecting the dead with the living

By Sue Carlton, Times columnist
In print: Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Story Tools E-mail this story Contact the editor Print this story Comment on this story Social Bookmarking [+] Digg Facebook Stumbleupon Reddit Del.icio.us Newsvine

ADVERTISEMENT [KATHLEEN FLYNN | Times] For more than four decades, Prudencio Vallejo has helped find the family and friends of people who seemingly died with nothing.

In a squat, burglar-barred building at the edge of downtown Tampa, in the Unclaimed Bodies Unit of the Medical Examiner's Office, Prudencio Vallejo works to find the living to take care of the dead.

At 64, he has done this for 42 years now, searching for family, friends or funds to see to the remains of those who died with nothing. Or at least seemed to.

Everybody's got somebody someplace, he likes to say. Every old man who dies alone in a nursing home, every homeless person, every loner. The job of his two-man unit is to find them.

His office is plastered with lively pictures of his wife, sons and grandkids, his desk spread with papers of the dead. When he started, they might get 10 or 20 cases a year. This year, they'll likely see a thousand. The world has changed.

The county used to bury its indigent, but last October it officially switched to cremation at a government rate of $387 per body. The ashes are spread in the Gulf of Mexico, and the mortuary maintains a list of names, along with the longitude and latitude of the gulf location, should family turn up later.

Remains are held 120 days, time used to search for relatives. Clues come from fingerprints, records, old-fashioned shoe leather. They come from an address on an old Christmas card, or a phone number scrawled on a matchbook.

Some stories hint of ancient hurts and betrayals, of abuse, illness, drugs, alcohol. Some people do not want to be found. Others never went looking for them. Vallejo knows there are those in the world who cannot tell you their mother's maiden name or the job their father held.

Some ask right off: Did he leave me anything? And then there is a son who had not seen his father in decades who was determined to do right by him in death.

Almost always, they find someone connected to the dead. About half the time, someone takes responsibility for the remains. But often, the story comes down to no money for a funeral.

There are surprises, too, like the recluse with lakefront property and the bag lady with a family and a bank account. "Everybody has a story," Vallejo says.

The phone on his desk rings, a sister from one of his cases calling. She has been to view her brother's body. Vallejo's voice is deep and soothing. "I understand," he is saying. "It's a shock." He is an easy man to talk to. "Take care," he says as they hang up.

"People need to vent," he says.

Last month, he got the case of a homeless woman named Wanda. She drowned in the Hillsborough River near the bridge where she lived with her boyfriend, Harold. Harold called Vallejo several times afterward, mostly to talk about what would happen to Wanda's remains.

Days later, Vallejo's fax machine spit out another death, sad as any, but with something more. A witness said Harold said he missed Wanda and wanted to be with her. He walked into that same water, still wearing his work boots. "As soon as I saw his name, I knew," Vallejo said.

He is Prudy to friends, Ybor City-born to a family in which Sundays meant time with aunts, uncles, cousins. People "do not stay in touch with each other like we did when I was growing up," he says.

He likes his job, likes that he doesn't just shuffle paper. On good days he goes home feeling like he did something, for the dead, and maybe for the living, too.