Candidate Interview: Cathy Seibel — LPC Coroner

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• Transcript

  Hello, my name is Cathy Seibel and I am running for La Plata County Coroner. Well, I believe that the roles and responsibilities of the excuse me coroner are to first and foremost tell the story of the deceased. And by tell the story, I mean we work hand in hand with law enforcement and our forensic pathologist and the witnesses that we have out there. And we make sure that the statements we get and what we see matches the forensic evidence. We also support the families throughout the very worst time of their life and help guide them through the next few steps, because many families have not gone through that yet. And I believe the coroner position is important to the community because of the story we do tell about the deceased. It gives information to the family who so craves that information to find out what happened. We give information to law enforcement about medical conditions and things like that, and to the community when necessary. If we have a communicable disease or something like that. Well, I’m seeking the office of the coroner because I have worked there for 15+ years, and I believe that I am really ready to become the coroner. I like the work that we do, and I want to be a I want to continue to be a leader in assisting this community and dealing with such a difficult thing as death. I bring to the office over years of experience, to that office. I also have, over the last year been assisting the coroner with all the administrative duties like getting medical records, talking to doctors and things like that. I also have law enforcement background with the Southern Police Department. I worked there for almost 18 years, first as a dispatcher and then as a resource officer, and I did have employees that worked underneath me. I also worked for EMS. I was on the Ignacio Volunteer Ambulance Service. I was there for about 15 years. I was the President for some years of that. And I’m also one of the three people that helped to co-found the Quick Response Team in Allison and Arboles. So I do have that law enforcement and EMS background. I believe what sets me apart from my opponent is my actual work experience in law enforcement and in EMS and in the coroner’s office, because I’ve been there for quite a few years, I’ve been in that coroner’s office through three coroners, coroner Dick Mullen, who first brought me in, and I just worked every now and then, and then I was brought in by the next coroner, Corner Doctor Carol Huser, who taught me all kinds of things. And I worked alongside Jan Smith, who at that time was her Chief Deputy Coroner. And then I’ve been working for Jan for for years. I believe I’m experienced enough to handle the difficult situations and to realize when I need to reach out for extra help. I don’t see really a lot of challenges at hand, but I do. I would like to recommend implementing a coroner’s software package that we would put on the county’s on our computers through the county, and it it takes care of each case. And in it you would have your coroner’s report, your any hospital records that we get, any information that we get from law enforcement, medical records, which can be hundreds of pages sometimes. And I would like to have that software program because as we uploaded all into that program, it gives you warnings as to what we might be missing. That’s really important if we have like a homicide case or something like that, our case files need to be complete and they usually are. But I would like to make sure as a new coroner, when I put that in. And then I would also like to propose hiring two part time deputies to leave, to help releave the duties of the two full time. I think the biggest challenges that a coroner faces as families watch so much TV that they think that you can tell the family exactly what time they died and you can’t. You can give an idea of when they die, but you can’t tell exactly when they died. Also corners when families don’t agree in the cases, sometimes the suicides family will be in denial. You have to be professional. You have to have experience with that because you know how. You have to know how to handle this family softly and gently, yet do your work as the coroner. Oh gosh, I don’t know. I have grandkids, so I hang out with them. But I think some of the my, my most favorite times is when I can work in my flower gardens and in my yard. And then I, my 89 year old father lives with me and he’s pretty house ridden, so I love being able to when I’m not calling on call on the weekends, I love to be able to take him for rides to Mancos or to Moab, Utah and things like that just to get him out of the house for the day. That’s kind of the things I like to do.