Coroner Shifts Field Office After Protest : Santa Clarita: The two-man office that opened six weeks ago after residents complained will be moved because funeral directors objected.

Complaints from an association of funeral directors have led the Los Angeles County coroner’s office to plan to move an investigators’ office out of the Santa Clarita Valley just six weeks after it was opened in a local mortuary.

Officials said the two-man office will likely be moved to Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar because the Los Angeles County Funeral Directors Assn. has protested the satellite office’s location at Eternal Valley Memorial Park Mortuary. Even though it is the only mortuary in the area, the funeral directors contend that locating the office there is a conflict of interest.

Dennis Persons, president of the association, said the arrangement appears to give Eternal Valley favorable treatment in a competitive industry, with the county using the mortuary’s facilities to store bodies before families choose funeral homes. “To me, it sounds like the county is getting cases for them,” he said.

Denying any conflict but citing pressure from the association, the coroner’s office is planning to move the office to Olive View Medical Center, the nearest county-owned hospital.

“We are negotiating to move in at Olive View,” said Bob Dambacher, a spokesman for the coroner’s office. “It’s a county facility so there will be no possible conflict. As soon as we can get the plans finalized we will move our people out of the mortuary.”

Two investigators were placed in the tiny office at the Newhall mortuary Jan. 2 in response to public outcry caused by situations in which sheet-covered bodies of accident victims stayed on streets or in wrecked cars for two to four hours. The delays occurred because investigators had to travel from the downtown Los Angeles coroner’s office.

Accident scenes could not be cleared, prolonging traffic tie-ups while the bodies were on view to passers-by.

Moving the office to Sylmar will still keep investigators within timely reach of the Santa Clarita Valley, officials said. Santa Clarita Mayor Jo Anne Darcy said she would have preferred that the investigators stay in the area but, “I guess we have to take the second” alternative.

Earl Clark, one of the deputy coroner’s investigators assigned to the new office, said that investigators have responded in minutes, not hours, to death scenes since the office opened at the mortuary. He noted that investigators coming from Sylmar could still face traffic bottlenecks, once again delaying their arrival at death scenes.

“It could be a difficult drive up here from Sylmar,” Clark said. “Each time, it would depend on traffic on the freeway. I am trying to fight the move down there. I think it will take us out of the area we are serving.”

However, Clark said that the coroner’s office has been unable to find other county property in the Santa Clarita Valley suitable for coroner’s offices.

Clark denied the funeral directors association’s contention that housing the coroner’s office at the mortuary had created a conflict of interest. He said that in each of seven field calls handled since Jan. 2 by the satellite office, burial arrangements were made by funeral homes other than Eternal Valley.

Officials said the office was opened in response to complaints about the delays. In October, two Canyon Country High School students were killed in separate accidents and the handling of the deaths brought emotional complaints to officials from friends of the victims.

In one of those incidents, Jill Hartman, 14, was hit and killed by a car Oct. 26, about a quarter of a mile from the high school. Her body remained covered at the scene for more than two hours while sheriff’s deputies waited for a death investigator. Several students leaving school passed by the scene.

Clark said the mortuary is the only facility in the area that has facilities for refrigerating bodies. The investigators have a desk, phone and a file cabinet in Eternal Valley’s lunchroom. They park their four-wheel-drive Blazer in the back and enter the lunchroom office through a back door marked “Flower Delivery.”

Eternal Valley General Manager Daniel Lang said he charges the county no rent and expects nothing in return. “We have the facilities they need here,” Lang said. “I made the offer to the county. Our whole purpose was to provide a community service. There’s no conflict.”

Persons, of the funeral directors association, praised the placement of investigators in the Santa Clarita Valley but said the use of a private mortuary was improper. Though he said he had no evidence that the county has practiced favoritism with Eternal Valley, he maintained that there is the appearance of a conflict.

“Countywide, directors have objected to the fact that the coroner’s office would deal with one funeral home in particular,” Persons said. “They should have been using a county facility from the beginning.”