Coroner’s Gift Shop Sales Rep
Los Angeles, California

Skeletons in the Closet is the trinket shop of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office in downtown L.A. The store grossed $271,923.72 in 2004. Sweatshirts, jackets, caps, briefcases, pens, key chains, mugs, mouse pads, lapel pins, silver car shades, welcome mats, beach towels, you name it—they’re all emblazoned with a body outline and are for sale here. According to Salene Limon, the shop’s sales rep for the past three years, the hottest item is a coroner’s T-shirt. A coroner’s windbreaker had to be discontinued because so many people wore it in attempts to enter crime scenes. Laugh if you will, but all this commercialism is for a good cause. The proceeds help support the Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program, an alternative sentencing option available through the L.A. county court system. The program focuses on the dire consequences of drunk driving, reminding us just how fragile life is. And who’d know better than the coroner’s office?