Coming Sunday: At L.A.’s morgue, the remains of thousands go unclaimed

They die in hospitals in Torrance, in nursing homes in Long Beach, on the street in Los Angeles. About six bodies arrive each day at L.A. County’s cemetery in Boyle Heights. There, Albert Gaskin gives each body a round metal tag with a cremation number. He records the tag’s number and the dates of the cremation. The name comes next. Then date of birth. And sex. Race. Date of death.

This Sunday, Times reporter Jon Schleuss writes about the county's unclaimed dead and the reasons so many people end up in a mass paupers' grave each year. Schleuss and researcher Maloy Moore spent months transcribing the handwritten names into digital form to create the first complete database of those scheduled for burial.

There's still time before the ashes of more than 1,400 people are buried in early December.

Do you know anyone in the database?

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