“Skeletons” digging out of the hole

It has always been, shall we say, a bare-bones operation, but the Los Angeles County Coroner’s famous “Skeletons in the Closet” gift shop is being haunted by budget gremlins this Halloween.

The little novelty store—known for its toe-tag key chains and chalk-mark-outline beach towels—has developed a cult-like following since 1993, when it opened. But scaring up a profit has been another matter. Although coroner’s officials say the store’s finances are improving, a forthcoming county audit is expected to report that the enterprise is still in the hole after 17 years.

The difficulty appears to be fairly basic, says L.A. County Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe, whose staff has conducted several reviews of the store dating back nearly a decade. She says the store’s sales simply haven’t covered its costs for a variety of reasons, ranging from the general demand for souvenirs to marketing and inventory issues. “It’s a nice concept,” Watanabe says, “but sometimes those little details can kill you.”

The numbers involved, of course, are miniscule considering the county’s $23 billion budget. The store’s revenues and costs haven’t surpassed roughly $175,000 annually for the past several years. But the shop has provided a unique form of public relations for the coroner’s office, putting a whimsical and irreverent twist on a public service that is otherwise associated with the macabre and morbid.

Founded after a secretary at the coroner’s office made a gag gift for one of the doctors, the store has grown from its original home in a supply closet to a spacious storefront in the historic lobby of the coroner’s office. Mail orders come from all over the world for offbeat souvenirs that include skeleton craft sets, coasters, official coroner’s T-shirts and signature boxer shorts, known as “undertakers.” In recent years, the store even has been featured occasionally on cable TV and novelty bus tours.

But its location—in a complex of county and industrial buildings east of Downtown—is a long way from Los Angeles’ more conventional tourist spots, and the store’s foot traffic is limited mostly to bereaved next-of-kin and others with coroner business.

The current financial audit, due in a couple of weeks, is a routine follow-up to a 2002 review that took a broader look at the coroner’s office. Among such factors as wavering consumer demand and inventory issues, auditors discovered another hit to the store’s bottom line: merchandise was being given away as gifts to guest speakers and departing county employees.

Money generated by the store is earmarked for the county’s Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program, the scared-straight morgue tour for teenaged drivers. But with so few dollars coming in, auditors this year found that the drunk-driving program was subsidizing the gift shop, rather than the other way around.

Anthony T. Hernandez, director of the coroner’s department, says that, by his calculations, Skeletons in the Closet made slightly more than it spent during the last two fiscal years because of better inventory controls and a tighter budget. The losses reported by the auditors, he and Watanabe say, represent cumulative totals since the store opened, not a year-by-year tally.

“It goes up and down,” says Hernandez. “Some years everybody’s rushing to us, and others—well, not so much.” Among other things, he said, the store is planning to improve its online marketing and is hoping to set up a Facebook page or other social networking site in the near future.

For store clerk Edna Pereyda, the facts and figures in all those audits, past and present, mean one thing: some long, solitary days behind the counter.

On a recent Friday at lunch, she worked for more than an hour with no company but the autographed 8×10-inch glossies of celebrities who’ve occasionally stopped by while researching movie action roles. A plastic skeleton hand guarded her little dish of Halloween candy. 

“People ask if this place is haunted,” she jokes. “But, no.”