Fired UCI Employee Denies Wrongdoing

It’s not a job many people would covet--working with cadavers in a basement.

And 27-year-old Christopher S. Brown earned $33,000 a year, far less than what he could have made as a funeral director.

But Brown, a licensed embalmer who joined UC Irvine’s College of Medicine in 1996, said he was happy to be there as director and sole employee of the school’s Willed Body Program, which takes in bodies donated for research.

“I love the school. I love my work,” said Brown, fired by UCI in a growing scandal over cremated remains and the selling of body parts.

“I think it’s great to help these families who wanted to make these donations, this last gift, to science, to medical research,” said Brown, who shares a Tustin townhome with his wife Venus. “The fact that I could help these families was just amazing and so fulfilling. I’d never do anything to break that trust.”

Yet he stands accused of just that. UCI officials announced Friday that Brown had been dismissed after an investigation found that proceeds from the sale of body parts donated to the school for research did not go to the university. They say Brown’s records--many destroyed by a computer virus--are so confused they cannot tell if the cremated remains of donated bodies were disposed of properly.

Brown said he’s being falsely accused. When he received a letter from the university three days ago warning he was about to be fired for misappropriation of funds, Brown said he was

shocked and devastated.

“I’ve done everything the way that I was trained or taught to do,” he said. “I’ve never done anything that wasn’t by the books.”

Brown grew up in Huntington Beach and attended parochial schools in Los Alamitos. He received his embalmer’s license in 1995 after taking courses at Cypress College and UCI. He worked for three years for SCI Service, a large funeral company, as an embalming supervisor before becoming head of UCI’s program.

Since 1996 he has worked in the basement of the medical school amid the refrigerated storage units. His duties included asking families to donate remains of their loved ones as well as embalming and storing bodies.

University officials say Brown dealt with the contractors who provided transportation for the remains and companies that provided cremation services. He was responsible for returning cremated remains to families that requested them or disposing of them at sea.

Brown said his job evaluations were overwhelmingly positive and that his supervisor said he might nominate him for an award a few weeks before he was suspended on Aug. 9.

“I went to Catholic schools. I have ethics, and I wouldn’t do anything wrong,” Brown said. “They’re ruining my career. And now I have nothing.”

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Staff writers Daniel Yi and Jeff Gottlieb contributed to this story.