Stockton couple removes dead bodies for the county, funeral homes

When someone passes away — for whatever reason — someone must be available to remove the body and transport it to a funeral home, cemetery or coroner's office. In San Joaquin County, that job falls to Michael and Kerri Herring.

Herring, who operates Michael C. Herring Enterprises with his wife and five part-time employees, will transport bodies, whether the person died at their home, at a hospital, at the scene of an accident or a murder scene.

He just signed a five-year contract with the county in March to pick up bodies that need to be examined by the coroner's office. That includes suspected homicides and suicides, accidental poisoning, drowning, fire, hanging, stabbing, gunshot wound, exposure, starvation, drug strangulation, deaths in prison and deaths associated with a known rape, according to the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department.

Herring will also transport to the county morgue anyone who had not seen a physician 20 days before death.

In addition to his work for the county, Herring also contracts with funeral homes to transport bodies from homes or hospitals to the mortuary or cemetery.

There were 4,576 deaths in San Joaquin County last year, and more than half of them were coroner's cases that Herring handled, according to the coroner's annual report by county Sheriff Steve Moore.

Herring and his staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He averages about two removals a day. He has six vans, two of which are always available to the county.

The vans are equipped with gurneys that cost about $2,000 apiece, stretchers, sheets, plastic body bags and rubber gloves.

Herring's calls come in bunches. One day, he'll have no work at all; the next day, he can be going from one call to the next.

"Right now, I'm sitting outside on my porch," Herring said one morning from his home in a rural area east of Stockton. "In a half-hour, I could be anywhere."

San Joaquin County pays Herring $90 for each body he transports. Two years from now, it goes up to $95, and in the fifth year, it'll be $100 per case.

Herring charges funeral homes more than he does the county, but he wouldn't disclose how much.

"The sheriff gets the best rate because they give us the most business — two a day," Herring said. "And I have a five-year contract (with the county). I know I will have a job for five years."

Although he has been in the body transport business for 15 years, including 11 with the county, Herring says he isn't hardened to seeing someone who has passed away.

"If it ever stops bothering me to a certain extent, I would quit," he said. "It's important to have compassion and feeling. Our job is helping people.

"Yes, it can be difficult, but it's important, and it needs to be done well," Herring said. "We're not looking for compliments, but we're not looking for complaints."

Herring doesn't work directly with grieving families, especially in coroner's cases. Law enforcement officers take the lead role in comforting families.

"We do it as carefully and respectfully as possible," Herring said. "We try to put a good face on the funeral business."

Herring typically wears a white dress shirt, gray slacks and a tie to give the deceased some dignity. He said he always tries to act appropriately because he believes he's personally representing the county or the funeral home he's working for at the moment.

"We try to keep a real low profile," Herring said. "Nobody knows who we are, which is fine with me."

And he's low-profile enough that he didn't want to be photographed by the News-Sentinel.

Herring said he doesn't work for any funeral homes in the Lodi area. The four mortuaries in Lodi and two in Galt generally do their own body removals, especially during business hours. Some contract with a private firm if the body needs to be transported out of town or removed on nights or weekends.

Herring said that working at a funeral home is good experience for his field, but it's not necessary. There's only one requirement to do his job: a business license.

His wife, Kerri, occasionally responds on calls to pick up bodies, but she spends more time answering phones, doing office work and dispatching the company's drivers to a location.

"She's affectionately known as the boss," Herring said.

During his spare time, Herring volunteers his time by performing his specialty during local schools' Every 15 Minutes programs, where a mock car crash takes place and an entire student body thinks temporarily that one of their classmates has died. Herring was part of the Every 15 Minutes program at Tokay High School this year.

"We think it's the right thing to do," he said.

Contact reporter Ross Farrow at rossf@lodinews.com.