Pizzas, Flowers . . . Autopsies?

Los Angeles - In the city where the famous drive luxury vehicles, Vidal Herrera has won fame for the vehicle he drives.

A 1994 white Chevy Astro minivan may not seem terribly eye-catching, but consider that Herrera's has "1800-AUTOPSY" painted in tall letters on the sides, and a run-down of related corpse services plastered over the rest of it.

His license plate it "YSPOTUA", which is "autopsy" spelled backwards. The frame around the plate reads: "Autopsy techs do it with more rigor mortis."

The van's cargo area contains scalpels, scissors, smocks, gloves, surgical attire, photography equipment, thread, syringes, and needles.

Wheeling to the Scene

"This is our gut container," he says, standing at the rear of his opened mini-van and displaying a plastic paint bucket with a lid and handle.

The instant, and ghoulish, image that comes to mind is Herrera in the back of the van, a flashing scalpel, and a pale corpse splayed out.

But nothing happens in the van. As the owner of a private autopsy service, Herrera's job is to schedule, and then perform, autopsies at a proper medical facility, either by himself or with a medical doctor. If he does it alone, Herrera, who is not a coroner, medical examiner , or doctor, always turns over his findings - i.e., livers, brain, kidneys, lungs, etc. - to a medical doctor for analysis. It's not that he's inexperienced: In his 24-year career, including several years as a Field Deputy Coroner-Investigator for the Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner/Coroner's office, he has handled and examined thousands of cadavers.

"Do you like driving in traffic?" he asks a visitor. "I love it, because it's great for business."

He's kidding, of course. Herrera takes his job seriously. He can use black humor because he isn't spooked or frightened by what he deals with everyday. "Death is not scary. Death is inevitable." he says.

"It's never bothered me, because I just have to remain focused on what we do." he shrugs. "We do young children, teenagers, adults, exhumations, skeletal remains, plane accidents, fire victims - every kind of case you could possibly imagine. We've seen it all."

Filling a Void in the Industry

The beginning of 1-800-AUTOPSY came in 1984, when Herrera was working in the L.A. County Chief Medical Examiner/Coroner's office. As he was lifting a corpse one day, he severely injured his back. The injury put him in a wheelchair for almost four years and eventually, he left the job.

By 1988, after he had time to survey the landscape of the death business, Herrera had noticed that the number of autopsies performed in America was shrinking dramatically. An estimated 2.3 million people die every year in the United States, he says. In 1970, as many as 50 percent went under the knife; now, he says only about two percent are autopsies.

The idea for the van was born.

For Herrera, an autopsy is as natural as death itself. The procedure can supply answers to all sorts of questions for family and loved ones, he explains. "They want to know an answer: Why did the person die? They want to know if the person was receiving adequate medical care - was there any negligence involved.?"

He is bothered by a statistic he read, that 40 percent of U.S. Deaths are misdiagnosed. "What is happening here? Why is this happening?" he asks. Call 1-800-AUTOPSY to find out the answer - or, wait for it - visit www.1800autopsy.com. The Latin phrase, Mortuis paresdium et vocem dare necessee est greets Herrera's Web visitors. It means, "The deceased must be protected and given a voice."

Herrera charges $2,000 for that voice - his price for a full autopsy. That figure doesn't include a battery of possible tests, photos, X-rays or toxicology reports, which can hike the price 15 to 20 percent. Business is good . . . for him, at least.

He has been driving around the greater Los Angeles area in his van for 11 years, responding to between 600-700 requests a year. He earns a six-figure income, and the Web site has only increased business. Now he says his phone rings constantly, day and night, and he works long hours to return calls and answer inquiries within a few hours.

In fact, business is so good that Herrera is doing what any successful entrepreneur would: He's expanding.

With a businessman's zeal, he declares that death his booming. He plans to sell franchises to colleagues in dozens of cities in the United States, and one day, go global.

He could be talking about a new e-commerce site when he says, "I think the year 2000, the new millennium, we are going to take the world by surprise.

But then he delivers the kicker. "As the death rate increases and the autopsy rate decreases in the hospital community, private autopsies are going to catapult. It's going to go through the roof."