In the past 20 years, Colorado Springs elder law attorney Catherine Anne Seal has met thousands of folks called John or Jane Doe.

Although they’re strangers to her, they become more than unknown deceased people lacking an identity for the short-term or remaining as unclaimed bodies in the long-term.

Seal, since 2004 wearing a second hard hat as the public administrator for Colorado’s 4th Judicial District, seeks to give those she didn’t know before they died the dignity they deserve in departing this world.

Because if there’s anything she’s learned over the past two decades in her appointed role, it’s this: “These people who passed away did not know their affairs would be in the hands of a complete stranger, and there’s no need to judge (families’ response),” Seal said. “You can’t be judgmental in how people process grief. We always remind ourselves to be respectful.”

A public administrator, who is appointed by a county’s chief district court judge, is the first person the coroner’s office or a hospital’s morgue calls to step in and take care of personal matters when someone dies and there’s no one else to do so.

“I’m not supposed to go look for work; I should only come in as fiduciary of last resort,” Seal said.

The public administrator’s work often goes unnoticed by the public, said El Paso County Coroner Dr. Leon Kelly, because “no one wants to think about the logistics of what happens after death unless they absolutely have to when someone they love or care for dies.”

Though tending to the matters of the dead is one of the finals acts of responsibility for families, in some instances there’s no one who can or will do that, Kelly said. Thus, the public administrator becomes a necessary end-of-life cog.

Every year, Seal averages 140 cases of unclaimed individuals with minimal or no assets, and another 10 unclaimed decedents who have estates worth more than $82,000 in cash assets or real estate of any value.

That’s double the amount she had when she became the public administrator, which she attributes to more people who die homeless.

“Without their critical work, our morgue and staff would be overwhelmed with unclaimed remains that would not get the dignity of care that the public administrator ensures,” Kelly said.

In addition to handling corpses, the court also may ask Seal to assume management of an estate, a conservatorship or a trust.

“I’m to keep scrupulous records and not to make important decisions without asking the court first,” Seal said. “It’s a complicated process in which we have to make sure everything ends up where it’s supposed to be.”

Seal’s calm demeanor belies the difficult tasks. Her office companion, Monty, a likely lab lacking breed pretension, further soothes anyone who walks in, as he cozies up to be petted and exchanges a trick for a dog treat.

Her cases include homeless people whose identities are unclear or who require an extended search to find family members.

“You have to make a reasonable, continued effort because the family has a right to know that this person has passed away,” she said.

Other examples: seniors with cognitive decline who had lost their spouses and had not made any arrangements for their own death, childless widows or widowers with no located relatives, adult children who lived with a parent who died but didn’t probate the estate before their death, and developmentally disabled adults whose deceased parents did not specify plans and cannot oversee the situation.

The coroner’s office exhausts all means of finding relatives of those who receive an autopsy following a sudden, unexpected or unnatural death. If unsuccessful, Seal takes over.

Her office arranges for a body to be taken to a funeral home that’s contracted with the county. She also will secure the deceased’s home or apartment and possessions.

“I may change the locks and get the guns out of the property,” Seal said.

She protects assets and uses them to pay the late person’s outstanding debts, such as rent, mortgage and other bills. That must be done before assets can be issued to family members or beneficiaries specified in a will or trust.

Subscription databases help identify possible relatives, who are sent a letter asking them to call Seal’s office regarding the person in question. She can’t divulge their death until she verifies that they are related.

Seal also has the authority to send a personal investigator to the deceased’s home to look for a will or an address book that might have names of family.

“As a last-ditch effort, we have all their mail forwarded to us,” she said, in hopes that a Christmas card or a letter from a relation will appear over time. If that happens, the sender will receive a letter from Seal in response.

People might say, “‘Yes, it’s my brother, and I’ve been worried because I haven’t heard from him,’” Seal said.

But not everyone wants to deal with their lost relative’s arrangements for a funeral, burial or cremation. And not everyone wants to keep the cremated remains of the departed.

“You can’t judge the family that chooses not to get involved,” Seal said. “There are often reasons — a family history or mental health problems that removed these people from their lives. Our job is to treat these people as dignified as possible.”

If a body has been identified but no family has been located, or if a family does not claim the dead body, the person will be cremated after 10 days. There’s a caveat to that process: If the person is of a religion that objects to cremation, such as Jewish or Muslim, the corpse may continue to be stored until a synagogue or mosque is consulted.

The county pays for cremation of unclaimed decedents, a service that Seal said generally costs under $2,000 at local funeral homes. She also tries to reimburse the county for expenses using estate money.

But the majority of the deceased she represents have no money or not enough from liquidating their assets to cover the costs of managing their posthumous affairs.

“I lose money; I’m only paid on the cases where there are assets,” she said.

It’s often a thankless job but Seals said she doesn’t do it for the thank yous.

“If I did, I’d be disappointed every day,” she said. “I get a lot of FU emails.”

Part of her time is spent is dealing with angry relatives, who may not have responded to her letter and not only have newfound knowledge of the death to deal with but also the news of her involvement.

“I’m in people’s lives and they didn’t ask me to be in their lives,” she said. “When they find out they don’t have legal authority, they get upset.”

But she enjoys the role of public administrator, which she does in addition to her private elder law practice, because it’s rewarding to be able to help someone — who was a mother, father, sister, brother, aunt or uncle or friend to others — receive compassionate treatment after their demise.

Seal takes possession of unwanted cremains and stores them in urns for at least a year, in case relatives contact her for them.

If a person was homeless upon death, she may turn the ashes over to a local organization that has a pauper’s gravesite at Evergreen Cemetery.

For other unclaimed ashes, Seal purchases a cemetery gravesite with a concrete liner and collectively buries a large number of urns.

A few times a year, babies who were stillborn or died after a premature birth aren’t retrieved from the hospital by parents — perhaps due to grief or undocumented status — and Seal arranges for the infant to be laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery.

“We usually have a service with people from my office, the court, the funeral home and a minister in attendance,” she said.

Funeral homes cannot cremate a body without the person having been identified, and during the height of COVID-19, she said county officials were worried that they would exceed capacity for holding corpses and would have to resort to keeping them in refrigerated trucks parked outside the coroner’s office, like some cities across the nation did.

“We didn’t want to be that county,” Seal said. But that never happened.

As far as the unusual situation at the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, whose owners are facing several felony charges for improperly storing 190 bodies, of which 22 bodies remain unidentified, it’s unlikely that Seal will be asked to assist.

“I will only receive bodies if the coroner identifies the deceased individual and no family steps forward to claim them,” she said. “Presumably, families paid the for-profit Return to Nature Funeral Home for services — which it appears the funeral home did not always perform.”

Thus, “the family members who paid the business have the legal right to direct disposition of the remains of their loved ones.”

Mishandling of corpses or remains is not unusual, she said, but the magnitude of the alleged abuse in the Return to Nature case is.