Not many 27-year-olds would choose to face mortality every day, but Christopher S. Brown has long felt at ease with the dead.
An embalmer by trade, Brown credits his unusual interest to his days as an altar boy at funeral Masses and the encouragement of a family friend in the Orange County coroner's office.
Brown's frame is husky and his pale skin shows the telltale trait of someone who spent his days in a chilled basement laboratory alone. Yet his ruddy cheeks hint at good humor.
But Chris Brown--recently fired from his $33,000-a-year job as director of the Willed Body Program at UC Irvine--has little to laugh about. He is at the center of a district attorney's embezzlement investigation, suspected of selling parts of donated cadavers for personal profit. His blue eyes seem to recede into dark circles brought on by long nights wondering how to keep up payments on the Tustin condominium he shares with his wife, Venus.
He vehemently asserts his innocence, contending that his supervisors at UCI knew what he was doing.
In his first detailed interview since word of the investigation broke, Brown also claimed the university is setting him up for a fall after he allegedly blew the whistle last year on the Southwest Mortuary Service. That Anaheim mortuary transport company, hired by UC Irvine to scatter cremated remains into the Pacific Ocean, was revealed to have stockpiled the ashes of 40 people who donated their bodies to science.
Now, Brown and his lawyers contend, the university is retaliating against him for exposing previous flaws in its Willed Body Program--in which about 70 people a year donate their bodies for use in medical education and research.
"I've whistle-blown one too many times," Brown said last week. "I've asked one too many questions. . . . I just want to say my name will be cleared. I will be vindicated. All the information the university has in the [Willed Body Program] computer will clear my name."
University officials declined to respond to the retaliation claim. But last year they said it was an employee of Southwest Mortuary Service, not Brown, who tipped them off to the stockpiled ashes. This account was confirmed at the time by the company's owner.
Flanked by his two civil attorneys at their Playa del Rey offices, Brown talked to The Times at length this week about his education, his background and how the ongoing scandal is personally affecting him. However, he and his lawyers declined to discuss the current allegations against him, including the possible mishandling of ashes and his apparent connection to outside businesses that profited from the program he ran.
