The following is a letter that I am sending out to introduce our organization and services to all of the funeral homes in the surrounding areas of Maricopa County, Arizona. Would love to hear your thoughts! Please feel free to leave me your comments.
White Tanks Angels Foundation
Miranda Rhuda, Founder
415 Dewey Street
Sandusky, OH 44870
December 7,
2013
ATTN:
Funeral Home Management, Owner and Staff
Hello, my name is Miranda Rhuda. I am writing this letter to you with the
intention of introducing myself and my organization to you. It is my hope that
we may be able to build a working relationship between us to better serve the
indigents that end up buried at White Tanks Cemetery or other county cemeteries
for indigents.
I started this organization in an
effort to help close the gap in the system for finding next of kin for those
who have none listed elsewhere. A 15-year
search for my mother ended in 2009 when I found out that she had passed in 2007
and was buried at White Tanks Cemetery.
I struggled to understand and work through the process of indigent
burials. I spoke with the public
fiduciary and the funeral home that cared for her, but still found no
reasonable explanation as to why I was not notified about her passing. I was told that it is not the funeral home’s
responsibility to find next of kin, but the Public Fiduciary’s job. In my 15 year search for my mother, I had
posted on over 1000 websites that I was searching for her; all of the postings
included her full name, date of birth, middle initial, my name and where we
were from, as well as where I thought she may be (Phoenix). A simple Google search would have turned up
next of kin for her, but a search was never done. The pain that I experienced in knowing that
my mother had not only died alone, but was also buried and put to rest alone,
buried by a chain gang was beyond explanation.
I truly struggled to understand the whole thing. I posted on blog sites about my experience
and before I knew it there were other families who poured out their hearts to
me about their same experiences with their loved ones. Once I realized that it was not an isolated case
(with my mother) but that it was happening, quite frequently, for many
individuals, I set out to try and make a change. I have been contacted by more than 30 families
who have discovered their loved ones buried at White Tanks, who have said they
would have more than graciously accepted the responsibility of laying their
loved ones to rest.
I have gone over the options for
trying to remedy this situation in my mind many times since 2009. The final conclusion that I felt would be the
best and the fastest was for me to start an organization where I can try to
close the loophole in the failure to search for next of kin. I am offering to provide my own personal
search services (acquired through 10 years of missing persons advocacy) free of
charge to the funeral homes and/or fiduciary to find next of kin for those who
have none listed. Many of these
indigents are homeless, addicts or mentally ill who have become estranged from
their families by their own free will—not by the families doing. If I fail to locate a loved one alive for a
family, the least that I can do is to provide them with the opportunity to give
proper goodbyes to their loved one at their time of death.
In addition to finding next of kin,
our organization also offers free services to families who live in distant
locations and cannot visit nor tend to their loved ones grave site at White
Tanks Cemetery. We have several members
who volunteer to go out a number of times per week to visit, place flowers and
take pictures to send to the family- in an effort to offer some comfort and
closure.
It is my hope that you will embrace
our organization and choose to use us as an ally in offering families the same
closure and comfort as those who are not indigent. For the quickest and most
ideal search for next of kin, obviously, as much information as possible is
desired. Having a full name, date of
birth and birth location is ideal for easier tracking of family members.
However, we have many memberships for various people search sites including
world membership to ancestry.com which provides extensive information in
collective databases. I really hope to get as much cooperation from as many funeral
homes as possible- in an effort at providing the closure needed to families in
search of their loved ones.
Without communicating with the funeral
homes, we have currently been researching the newspaper obituaries for listings
that request more information on the deceased.
The problem with this method is that we are only working to inform
families of their loved ones passing and burial. We would like to get ahead of the burials, by
receiving immediate notices from the funeral homes and work to find next of kin
who can choose the method of burial for their loved ones, saving money for the
tax payers of Maricopa County and healing families all over the country.
If you are contacted by a family, who
lives out of state, requesting information on their loved ones plot at White
Tanks, please feel free to refer them to our organization so that we may offer our
free visitation services to them. We
also assist families in navigating through the confirmation of identity, death
certificate and paperwork process for the deceased.
If you would like to speak more about
this- the fastest and easiest reply method would be to e-mail me at WhiteTanksAngels@gmail.com Please feel free to also write me via US
Postal Mail or call me at 419-602-7147.
If I do not answer, please leave a message and I will get back to you
ASAP.
God Bless you for your services,
Miranda N. Rhuda, Founder
White Tanks Angels Foundation
In the letter I have included the following insert:
To Begin Participating in Our
Services Immediately:
You may send e-mail listings for
your indigent cases (with no next of kin) to WhiteTanksAngels@gmail.com SUBJECT LINE: Indigent Search Requests
Please include as much
information as possible about the Deceased:
a.
Full Name of
the Deceased
b.
Date of
Birth
c.
Location of
Birth
d.
Any known
relatives
e.
Any known previous
addresses
f.
Place and
date of death
g.
Place and
date of burial
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