By LISA HLAVINKA
Staff Writer

This holiday season, the founders of the Next of Kin Registry System hope families talk about something more than turkey, football and Christmas presents.

They urge families to talk about Ohio’s Next of Kin Registry. The registry, implemented Sept. 8, allows state residents to register up to two people for law enforcement to contact during an emergency.

“Make it a part of your family holiday,” said Linda Wuestenberg, a Columbus resident and co-founder of My Emergency Contact Information. “Have everyone take 15 minutes, pull out their driver’s licenses and register their next of kin online.”

Wuestenberg lost her son, 33-year-old Steven Burge — nicknamed “Stevie B”— in a car accident about 2 a.m. on Feb. 11, 2007.

It took police seven hours to notify Wuestenberg of Steven’s death — but not for lack of trying.

Police first went to the address on Steven’s driver’s license, but Steven lived alone and only his dogs were in the house. Three or four police officers worked to find his family, pulling old records and looking through phone books, without any success.

After several hours, the officers found a neighbor who had keys to Steven’s house. Once inside, police found his cell phone and dialed the last number Steven had dialed. That number was a co-worker’s, who contacted a supervisor to pull Steven’s personnel records, where he found Wuestenberg’s information.

At 9:30 a.m., police finally told Wuestenberg about the accident and that Steven had died.

“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “And this happens all the time.”

The idea for the Next of Kin Registry came to Wuestenberg soon after her son’s death. With all the technology available, why shouldn’t the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles have a next of kin notification list?

A few months after her son’s death, Wuestenberg contacted her state representative about her idea. Her sister also lost her son and her grandson — both in separate accidents. Together, the sisters helped get the Next of Kin Notification bill passed, which Gov. Ted Strickland signed on May 1.

“This is the fastest-passing bill in Ohio history,” she said. “It’s unheard of.”

People can register at any deputy registrar’s office or through the BMV’s Web site: www.ohio.bmv.gov. As of Oct. 20, 47,245 people have registered online, said Lindsey Bohrer, public information officer at the Ohio Department of Safety.

Children younger than 18 must register a parent or guardian into the system, but adults are allowed to register anyone close to them, even if not a family member, Bohrer said.

The information is added to LEADS (Law Enforcement Automated Data System), and only can be accessed by law enforcement or authorized BMV personnel, Bohrer said.

Lt. Joshua Swindell, commander of the Medina post of the state highway patrol, said after the scene of a fatal accident is secured, identifying the victim and notifying his or her family is the most important thing the patrol does.

“It needs to be timely,” he said. “You need to let them know right away what is going on.”

“It takes two, three, four hours tops,” on average to notify the next of kin, he said. However, several things can contribute to a lengthier search.

One of the problems in Wuestenberg’s case was she and her son had different surnames, making it impossible for police to find her in the phonebook.

Sometimes the address on a victim’s driver’s license is out of date, or the victim is not carrying an ID at all. At that point, troopers look to BMV imaging to identify the victim, but if the driver does not own the car, law enforcement must track identity through the address on the car’s registration.

On one occasion, it took troopers two or three days to identify a victim that had been so badly burned troopers could not identify him by BMV photos.

“You couldn’t tell who it was at all,” Swindell said. “You couldn’t tell anything.”

Swindell said though they thought they knew who he was, they could not be “100 percent sure.” They had an address, but, like in Steven’s case, no one was home. In cases like these, law enforcement must obtain a search warrant to get inside the home, where they look for receipts, envelopes, anything to figure out who the victim is.

Swindell called such methods “primitive.” The Next of Kin Registry will make it faster for troopers to identify victims and notify their families.

“It won’t make it a science, but it will be very beneficial and reduce the time it takes to notify a family,” he said.

Since the bill passed and the system implemented, Wuestenberg and her sister founded the nonprofit organization My Emergency Contact Information to educate schools, corporations and civic organizations about the Next of Kin Registry. Wuestenberg said she wants to make sure others do not have to wait as long as she did to receive news about their loved ones.

“My son died, and that robbed me of seven hours I could have held his hand,” she said.

Hlavinka may be reached at 330-721-4048 or lhlavinka@ohio.net.

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