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At search's end, a pauper's grave

Her puzzled Michigan family tried to locate Linda Paetsch for six years. But success added to agony.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published August 12, 2005

[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]

A flag identifies the plot -- 1 West, Lot 13, Space 3 -- in Rest Haven Memorial Park in Tampa where Linda Paetsch received a pauper's burial in 1999 after dying in a coma from accident injuries. Hillsborough County officials could not locate any relatives.

	Linda Paetsch
	[The Flint Journal: Lisa DeJong]
	George Paetsch, 69, of Oregon Township, Mich., wipes away tears as he talks last week about the six-year search for his daughter Linda Paetsch.
	[The Flint Journal: Lisa DeJong]
	Michael Paetsch, in Michigan, talks on a cell phone Aug. 2 to an official in Hillsborough County about his late sister Linda Paetsch. In background are his parents, George, a hand on Michael's shoulder, and Beverly.

TAMPA - For six years, Linda Paetsch's relatives in Michigan waited and worried and wondered.

Just after Christmas in 1997, she had followed a boyfriend to Florida. She called from time to time and always contacted her stepmother on Mother's Day.

In May 1999, the Mother's Day call didn't come.

"We just could not figure it out," said her father, George Paetsch, 69.

So the search for Linda began.

Family members couldn't afford a private investigator but looked for her in every major city in Florida. They scoured the Internet and called hundreds of numbers.

"Through the years, we never stopped," said Beverly Paetsch, 52, Linda's stepmother."We just wanted closure."

Finally, in May, their search led to a pauper's grave in Tampa. Linda's body lay in a plot known only as 1 West, Lot 13, Space 3.

She ended up there after a series of unfortunate circumstances, bureaucratic mistakes, transposed Social Security numbers and simple bad luck.

Now, her family wants her back, but Hillsborough County officials have denied their requests to pay for exhuming Linda's body and returning it to Michigan. It remains in its unadorned grave as her relatives half a country away vow to fight the county's decision.

"We want our daughter home," George Paetsch said, "and by golly, she's coming home."

The accident happened about 8:30 p.m. on May 12, 1999. Tampa police reports show that 43-year-old Linda Paetsch was riding her bicycle across Adamo Drive near 50th Street when she crossed in front of a Toyota driven by a 26-year-old Plant City man.

He slammed his brakes and skidded but couldn't stop, reports stated.

Linda's path toward anonymity started that night. She carried no identification. On the accident report, the officer wrote her last name as "Page" rather than Paetsch. He listed her as homeless, likely unaware that she worked as a waitress and was living in a co-worker's home.

She was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where she slipped into a coma May 15.

"Just the thought of me not being by her bedside ..." George Paetsch said. "If I would have been there ... she might still be (alive) today."

Linda died alone on May 31, 1999. Hospital officials turned her body over to the county Medical Examiner's Office.

"When she was referred to us, she was referred with three last names and two Social Security numbers," said Prudy Vallejo, supervisor for the office's unclaimed body unit.

He said the office didn't have Internet access in 1999, which further hindered investigators. They checked local welfare agencies, her last known address and other sources, he said, but came up empty.

"We do the best we can with the information available to us," he said. "It's in the county's best interest to find the family. It isn't something we take lightly."

Vallejo said a friend of Paetsch's told investigators she had children and other living relatives but didn't know where they lived.

So Vallejo chose to bury Paetsch rather than the less expensive option most often used by the county: cremation.

"Precaution on our side," he said.

Still, there were mistakes.

Neither the hospital nor the Medical Examiner's Office appears to have notified police that Paetsch died after the accident.

"It's kind of aggravating to us," said Tampa police Sgt. Paul Southwick. "They never asked us."

He said that because Paetsch had several minor arrests on record - trespassing, disorderly conduct, loitering - officers might have been able to find relatives by using her jail and fingerprint records.

"There's no doubt in my mind we could have found next of kin in a reasonable time," Southwick said. "This case just happened to get overlooked or fall through the cracks."

It took a detective hundreds of miles away to help the Paetsches learn Linda's fate. In 2003, one of her brothers called Steven Shust, a veteran detective at the North Miami Police Department who works missing persons cases.

"They had no direction," Shust said of the family. "It was like a thorn in my paw. People need help, and that's what we're there for."

He also ran into dead ends until May, when one of Paetsch's brothers called back with an accurate Social Security number. Shust called back within a day to tell the family that Linda was dead and buried in Tampa.

Finally, the wondering and worrying was over.

But the frustration continues.

Linda's family insists that Hillsborough officials made careless errors in handling her case and gave up on finding relatives too easily.

"Everybody dropped the ball; nobody gave a damn," George Paetsch said. "It's just unbelievable this could happen in this day and age."

Family members said county officials at first seemed open to helping exhume Linda's body and shipping it back to Michigan.

So relatives talked to funeral workers and got quotes from a headstone maker. Because Linda's body was not embalmed and was buried in a plain, gray, pressed-board coffin, her family refused to exhume anything less than the entire vault. They didn't want the body disturbed.

They submitted a claim in July, asking for about $5,500 to transport the body and additional money to purchase a plot and conduct a small funeral.

Last week, the family learned that the five-member Hillsborough County Claims Committee had rejected the claim, including a request to correct the spelling of Linda's name in county records.

Sheree Fish, a health and human services attorney for the county, declined to discuss details. "That's confidential," she said.

As for any further appeals the family might have, she said, "Anybody can always come to the (county) commission to ask for special consideration."

The Paetsches have vowed to press on. They turned to the company that insured the driver who hit Linda, hoping for reburial costs. But the company said the time allowed to file a claim had expired.

Now they have contacted an attorney, seeking advice on how to take action against the county.

"We don't want anything nasty; we're not about that," Beverly Paetsch said. "We're not trying to get a million dollars."

They're just trying to get their daughter, who was mother to five and sister to six, whom they missed in life and now in death.

"We just want her home."

Information from the Flint (Mich.) Journal was used in this report.

[Last modified August 12, 2005, 00:46:18]