What Happens When Homeless Folks Die in Seattle

More people living outside means more people dying outside

If you die in Seattle, you will get buried. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office will make sure of it. It might not be speedy, and it might not be glamorous, but it’ll happen one way or another. And people will come — even if you didn’t know them, and they didn’t know you.

For 25 years, the King County Indigent Burial Remains Program has ensured that all individuals who die in the Seattle area receive a proper service, even if they can’t afford it or have no next-of-kin.

The remains of these individuals — some who died in hospitals, others who died outside, and others still who passed in publicly-owned housing or shelters — are kept at the ME’s office for weeks and often years, while County sleuths try to find anyone who can put them to rest. They talk to people in the community and they do online research and they make phone calls.

Still, it’s hard to locate everyone.

“We believe that 18 of them were likely experiencing homelessness, and they all died between 2007 and 2016,” stated medicolegal investigator and indigent remains ceremony coordinator James Sosik in an interview with King County last year. “Things may have been hard at the time of their death, but…