Coroner’s Daughter Takes Notes

I gave a talk the other evening, not all that unusual I do give a lot of them. I have always wondered if the stuff I say gets across to listeners, just like everyone who gives a talk, but after this talk I got some feedback. My 9-year-old daughter was along and took some notes to pass her time. I thought I’d use her notes as the basis of a post (I corrected her spelling):

“more suicide dies than homicide” I start these talks with some local information about death, this information (although I use proper syntax) often seems to catch everyone’s attention.

“my dad does tours in his office old and young” We do a number of outreach activities to help demystify the office and as a nod to the huge public interest in forensics; e.g. tours for students and adults, talks at schools and to groups, and career day activities.

“kids aren’t allowed to die before grown-ups” My statement is actually: Kids shouldn’t die before their parents. I use this to drive home death prevention information for kids and teens that boils down to getting them to think, not take chances, and make good choices.

“kids, grown-ups and teens kill depending on their personality” I’m not sure where this came from, but I did talk about violence prevention as a part of premature death prevention.

“there are people drinking and driving then they die” I think this one speaks for itself.

“my dad made a blog, he’s called the blogging coroner, its like a public diary like MySpace.com and he is the first coroner to blog” Again, it is what it is.

(after taking a phone call) “its tough being on call 24-7” I had to pause the talk to speak with one of my deputies who was responding to a car crash with a fatality and dispatching a second deputy to a simultaneous death call at a local hospital. I am always on-call and take calls.

“Tips: don’t drink and drive; don’t do anything that can hurt you or others!” I closed with several tips, my Coroner’s Health Tips, on how to forestall death. I work just as hard to keep folks out of my office (i.e. alive), as I do taking care of medicolegal death investigations.