As a little girl, freshman criminology/criminal justice major Samantha Gavin would accompany her father when he went deer hunting.

When the young Gavin gutted her first deer, she examined its heart and other internal organs.

“I would look at the organs until my father forced me to put them down,” said Gavin, an Andover resident. “This made me realize that blood and guts didn’t bug me.”

Later, Gavin developed an interest in law, criminology, criminal justice, and forensics by watching TV shows such as CSI. This interest led her to her first Field Period last summer at the Monroe County Office of the Medical Examiner, an agency that investigates all reported deaths not attended by a physician and those that may not be natural.

“I chose the Monroe County Office of the Medical Examiner because I am thinking of becoming a medical examiner,” she said. “Doing a Field Period there gave me the opportunity to see what the duties of a medical examiner are, allowed me to find out if I would be able to handle working on bodies, and to see what being an investigator at the medical examiner's office would be like.”

Gavin was responsible for different tasks, depending on which shift she worked.

“During the day shift, I was able to watch both external exams and internal autopsies,” she said. “On the night shift, I would go out on road calls with the investigators to either pick up a body, or to release the body to the funeral home.”

For both shifts, Gavin would file cases, answer the phone, and help process bodies that were either brought back by the investigators or sent to the medical examiner's office by another county, among other duties.

While she has not yet taken any classes within her major, Gavin credits her adviser, Janine Bower, assistant professor of criminology/criminal justice and sociology, for helping her realize uncertainty is OK.

“When I first told Dr. Bower that I was unsure of what career I wanted to pursue, she told me that was fine and that I should try to complete my Field Periods in a variety of area,” said Gavin. “Dr. Bower said doing so would help me figure out which career path I would want to follow.”

And now that Gavin has completed her first Field Period, she could see herself becoming a medical examiner.

“Getting to be the person who figures out how and why someone died fascinates me,” she said. “I would rather figure out how a person died than try to figure out ways to save them. Plus, I find the whole blood and death thing to be pretty cool.”

According to Gavin, most of the CSI-type shows do not compare to the real thing.

“On TV, the medical examiner is always at the scene, a group of five or six people do everything, and lab results come back within hours,” explained Gavin. “In real life, the medical examiner very rarely goes out to a scene, it is more than five or six people doing everything, and toxicology results usually take two-to-three months to come back.

“In real life, the investigators do not carry guns, and people who work in the toxicology lab do not go out to the scene; instead, they stay in the lab,” sadded Gavin. “Investigators do not walk into the autopsy room while an autopsy is being performed to find out what happened; they wait for the medical examiner to tell them what happened after the autopsy has been finished. Also on TV, several of the machines that are shown in the lab are not being used correctly.”

Gavin will take her initial Field Period experience and compare it to future Field Periods, which will help her figure out the career she wants to pursue.

Next summer, Ishe hopes to conduct a Field Period with a crime scene investigator.

-- Gretchen Parsells