The beach towel is the L.A. County Coroner's office most popular item. (Emily Goldberg/Neon Tommy)

“What is your relation to the individual?” the woman at the front desk asked. 

“He’s my son,” the man said plainly. 

Just next door, Edna Pereyda helped customers with very different types of property – T-shirts, towels and hats. Pereyda has worked at the Skeletons in the Closet, the L.A. County Coroner’s gift shop for nine years, sitting behind a desk as customers pick out key chains, cups, sweatshirts, backpacks and beach towels.

“It’s fun in here, but outside, it’s straight faces all the time. There are families grieving and picking up their loved ones’ remains,” Pereyda, the manager, said. 

For 21 years, Skeletons in the Closet has operated as a gift shop at the agency, with the purpose of promoting the awareness of the fragility of life, and accountability among individuals, according to the store's website. 

L.A. County Coroner Chief of Operations Craig Harvey said that the concept for the store was born when his department gave out registration gifts after a West Coast seminar it held, and was surprised by the high level of demand for the coffee mugs and t-shirts emblazoned with the coroner's office's logo.

One of the original registration gifts, a beach towel featuring an image of a chalk outline of a body at a homicide site, has remained the store’s top-selling item to this day. 

“We had small beginnings, and never intended for it to get so big. Soon after the seminar, we created other items like mugs, tumblers, T-shirts, jackets and lunch boxes,” Harvey said. “There are a significant number of people that identify with [our] office.” 

This surprising affinity, said Harvey, forced Skeletons in the Closet to move out of their original location - what was literally a closet – to larger space, with more room for inventory. For six years now, the store has occupied a portion of the main lobby of the coroner’s office, three times the size of the original location, added Pereyda. 

Harvey said he attributes part of the demand for the department's products to popular television shows that featured the L.A. County Coroner’s office, such as Adam-12 and Quincy M.E.

The Hollywood appeal of the gift shop has brought in customers from every walk of life. On the front counter are photo displays of visits from celebrities like Dustin Hoffman, Matt Damon and Milo Ventimiglia, and Pereyda said she has assisted customers from all over the world. 

“I’ve had customers from Australia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, France,” she said. “They see us in different magazines, newspapers and travel television channels and want to come in and see.” 

While Skeletons in the Closet is open all year long, Pereyda said the busiest time of the year is around Halloween, when she’ll often see more than 75 customers a day.  The store is also a popular destination for tourists over the summer, as well as for birthday gifts, she said. 

Despite a gaping contrast between the shop's fun atmosphere and the somber nature of events in the Coroner’s office, Harvey said the gift shop was never meant to be offensive. 

“The intent is that the gift shop wasn’t to make light, or make fun of death in the sense. We understand that people have had tragedies sin their lives, so the shop is designed to be tongue-in-cheek, and not mean-spirited in any way,” Harvey said. “It’s light-hearted and that’s a reason for the success because people accept it for what it is and have fun with it." 

Reach Staff Reporter Emily Goldberg here.