Mobile coroner makes house calls for cut rate

By Ed Leibowtiz

In Los Angeles, proving ground for the drive-in restaurant and the drive-by shooting, Vidal Herrera as 1-800-AUTOPSY van seems an inevitable addition to the landscape.

Herrera, autopsy technician and chief executive of Autopsy/Post Services, commandeers his vehicle to hospitals, mortuaries, brain banks and homicide scenes, offering everything from a routine autopsy to brain procurement. Thanks to city budget cuts that have hammered the Los Angeles County Department of the coroner, and the appeal of his "800" number, Herrera has carved out an expanding niche.

"The death business is a recession-proof business" Herrera observes, "and it’s going to increase because the population is aging." There will also be a larger field of human tissue to harvest, he predicts, if the medical profession can persuade people to donate it.

Herrera’s ascent reads like a Hereto Lager story. Reared in the impoverished barrios of East L.A., he was working as an orderly when an autopsy supervisor recognized his potential. "You’re big, you’re strong," the supervisor told him. "You should do autopsies."

As a coroner’s assistant and technician, he participated in the autopsy of TV’s David Janssen, and found the fingerprint on a window that would help bring Richard Ramierz, the notorious night-stalker, to justice. The heavy lifting eventually took its toll on Herrera’s back, and after 4 1/2 years of recuperation, no area coroner’s office would hire him.

So in 1988, he founded Autopsy/Poser Services. He now employs four retired coroners on a free-lance basis, a criminologist, a student with medical ambitions and Vicki Klebanoff-Herrera, his wife and controller.

Thanks to medical malpractice, there has always been a market for second opinion after a coroner’s autopsy. Lately, Herrera has found additional work in the wake of L.A. county budget cuts. Until Aug. 18, if no criminal activity was suspected, the Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner would perform an autopsy for a fee of $1,320.33, according to spokesman Scott Carrier. On Aug. 19, that charge soared to $2,521.29, making Herrera’s price of $1,800 to $2,200 a compelling alternative.

The New York City Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, by contract, still offers autopsies free of charge regardless of the probable cause of death, according to Ellen Borakove, director of public affairs.

Autopsy/Post Services has secured lucrative contracts at the West L.A. Veterans Administration hospital. On a recent afternoon, Herrera could be found in the hospital basement, removing organs from a deceased resident of South Central. Working with a first-year pathology resident and and apprentice, he peeled away the skin from the chest and neatly clipped the rib cage with garden shears, "It’s $35 for garden shears, " Herrera explains, "as opposed to $200 to $500 for surgical instruments which do the same thing. He also uses a large soup ladle to empty out the body cavity.

Herrera has explored other opportunities, some grisly, others easier to stomach. He offers post-traumatic cleanup, visiting homicide and suicide scenes after the body has been removed. "There’s usually a large amount of bloody body tissue spread about or brain matter splattered on the celling, he observes. Or a corpse will not be discovered until three or four days after rigor mortis. Herrera digs the bullets out of the walls, removes the soaked carpet and makes everything sanitary.

When not on a job, he’s busy securing trademarks for his business and 800 number; he says he’s mulling a national franchise. Having established his reputation on the set of "Quincy," he consults for TV and movies, imbuing a show with pathological realism. He also keeps up with his amateur baseball team, the Autopsy/Post Services Stiffs, who may yet win that coveted game against the L.A. County Coroner’s Vultures.