Next Of Kin Learns Of Death The Hard Way

There was one major problem when a funeral director called, asking Sharon Heath when she planned to do something with her son Tim’s remains.

She didn’t know he was dead.

Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend’s disaster-prone office is in the midst of another human-relations meltdown.

Police brass say Heath’s son was written off as an indigent and his body lay unclaimed for 11 days because Amend & Co. didn’t follow their own policy and retrieve the dead man’s wallet from the police property room.

“You’re talking to a person who is really angry,” says Heath, a Prosser, Wash., resident. “And I want someone to answer up for this.”

Tim Handy, 39, had telephone numbers of his boss and mother on him when the Priest River, Idaho, resident died in Spokane on March 31 of a drug overdose.

Handy’s mother, friends and loved ones should have been notified in short order. Instead, they were frantic for days, wondering what had happened to the unmarried lumber mill worker who mysteriously had disappeared.

Handy finally was found the hard way: When he failed to show up for work and appointments, his boss called the man’s landlord. She called her Priest River attorney, who finally got Idaho police involved. The deputies made routine calls to Spokane agencies until they discovered where he was.

Heath says the delay in learning her son was dead not only was gut-wrenching but also was costly. She says she had to pay $20 a day to get her son’s car out of police impoundment, plus hundreds in extra mortuary expenses.

Sharon “definitely has a complaint,” says a sympathetic and frustrated Spokane police Lt. Jerry Oien.

Handy’s “wallet was noted in the detective’s report and deputy coroner’s report. They (the coroner’s office) dropped the ball.”

Amend doesn’t talk to the press these days, presumably because of lawsuits pending against him for some of his past bonehead stunts.

His detractors accuse him of homophobia, being insensitive to grieving people and making off-the-wall guesses about causes of death. In March, a state medical board charged Amend with “moral turpitude” for demeaning his profession.

He’s a peach, all right. But one Amend employee, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, blames police for what happened.

“They (police) don’t want anything to happen over there that doesn’t make them look lily white,” says the employee, adding it was up to police to call Heath.

Not so, counters Oien. Amend specifically set up the procedure for notifying next of kin when he took office in 1994. The problem, Oien adds, is that the coroner “changes the script on us all the time.”

“I’m sure this is just another one of the thorns in his side,” adds detective Don Giese, who investigated the Handy case. “But he’s got to do his job.”

Those who knew Tim Handy describe him as an outgoing, likable bachelor who played golf at Priest River’s Ranch Club every chance he got. His boss at J&D Lumber says Handy was a model worker, the No. 2 man on the night shift.

But Handy apparently had a wild side he hid from golfing buddies and co-workers.

He died in a Spokane apartment rented by a couple of his casual friends. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose. There is no evidence to suggest Handy was a long-term user.

Giese ruled out foul play. The detective speculates Handy, who had drug problems years ago, may have relapsed and accidentally overdosed himself.

Handy’s mom wishes there were a way to write about her son without mentioning drugs. Unfortunately, there is no honest way to make this story any less sad.

“At this point, it doesn’t matter why or how he died,” says Heath.”I’m tired of this passing-the-buck crap. I lost a son. I’m very angry.”

, DataTimes