Unclaimed Persons: Please Tell Someone

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-smolenyak-smolenyak/unclaimed-persons-please_b_605199.html

The first piece I wrote for The Huffington Post was about unclaimed persons, one of those quiet epidemics that somehow slips beneath the radar. As I explained then,

"These aren't John and Jane Does. Rather, these are people whose identities are known, but whose relatives aren't, so they are -- just like the items that accumulate at lost-and-founds -- frequently unclaimed. The same thing that happened to the gloves you left on the train can happen to the widowed great-aunt whose younger relatives have lost touch with her."

I'm writing about this today and I'll do it again in the future because this is a topic that warrants broken-record behavior. Coroners across the country are struggling to find relatives of a growing number of unclaimed individuals, and as explained by journalist Liana Aghajanian in her recent article on the unclaimed in Los Angeles, the country's economic woes are only adding to the pressure. While it's true that some of the unclaimed are people who have chosen to separate from their families entirely, the reality is that it can happen to anyone. At least one celebrity has had the heart-breaking experience of learning that one of his siblings was among the unclaimed for several weeks after his passing.

Fortunately, there is one rather unexpected glimmer of hope - a team of genealogists who are volunteering their detective skills to assists coroners in Tampa, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Honolulu and elsewhere. Now marking its second birthday, the group has located family members for 163 decedents. That's 163 families that are no longer left wondering.

More at the link ---

_____


Note: This is a colleague of mine, and I have helped the team with trying to identify living family members. PLEASE pass this information on, so more people can get involved. Let's do something positive for the folks who had the misfortune of passing on alone.

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[Dappleganger]

2. K&R

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. And then there are those

family members who would like to claim someone but simply cannot afford to do so - and are often left with residual guilt.

[Donnachaidh]

4. that too. And that's happening more and more.

But they can have some kind of closure in knowing *where* their loved ones are. :shrug:

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. Absolutely

Anyone who is separated from family/friends - if only far a brief period - can be lost.