There are 626 people, the most King County has ever interred at one time through its indigent remains program, stacked neatly beneath a fresh marble grave marker, each with cremains in their own plastic urn within a weathertight concrete crypt. It’s also the biggest jump the county has seen from a previous ceremony to the next; the last one, held in June 2025, honored 405. The ceremonies are not annual—they occur whenever there are enough remains to bury.
The crowd gathered at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton on Wednesday is a typically Seattle mixed bag, with some in more formal black outfits and others in hoodies and jeans. Bagpipes—like most of the ceremony, performed by an enthusiastic volunteer—make the ceremony incredibly easy to find.
“The piper, he’s always wanted to be piping here at this ceremony,” says Joel Ingebritson, lead chaplain for the Seattle Fire Department and the King County Sheriff’s Office. “Everybody who’s here wants to be here to share this moment.”
There’s no one particular demographic that makes up the majority of the people laid to rest in these ceremonies. Many lived long lives—so long, in fact, that they outlived anyone who could have claimed their bodies. Some are infants who entered the world in challenging and traumatizing circumstances. Others had families or friends to claim them, but nobody who could afford a burial. Around 12 percent were experiencing homelessness at their time of death, ballparks James Sosik, Lead Forensic Medicolegal Investigator for King County Medical Examiner’s Office, between the years 2020 and 2025. (Demographic data for this year isn’t available yet.)
Some attendees are mourning a specific person among the 626, but more are here in reverence, to hold some space, however small, for each life on the list. Lori and Yolanda Rodriguez, sisters who work at an adult family home, came to pay their respects to a former resident who they call Esteban.
“He was just a very nice guy, you know,” says Yolanda, showing me a video of a lanky, elderly man with an infectious smile and a birthday cake. “After he came to us, he was kind of part of our family, you know? He had no family. So when he came to us, that’s how he felt.”
Clergy from multiple faiths take turns reading the names of the dead in 15 shifts, offering religious blessings in between—the ceremony is multi-faith, not faith-neutral. Some read from texts, while others offer prayers. A Buddhist leader sounds a chime alongside a blessing.
It takes three people just to get through the Bs. During the Js, someone tries to get a drone video, and the drone itself, rising up behind the silent, solemn crowd, sounds like a swarm of wasps. The reader persists.
After the final name, someone plays a brief farewell song on an acoustic guitar. Around half the attendees leave, but the rest linger, sitting with the enormity of the loss. Several leave bouquets on the marker.
The state paid for both the burial and funeral for people who died on public assistance until 1993, when the Legislature cut that funding. Washington’s counties scrambled to figure out how they could foot the bill respectfully.
King County implemented its program by the end of that year, and opted to only pay for cremations, and a communal burial for them, as a last resort. So it became the work of the Medical Examiner’s Office to start tracking down families—and often, when they find them, helping them find cremation or burial options that they can afford.
“But if some people just flat out say, ‘Man, I got nothing. I’m not working. My husband’s disabled. We’re on SSI. We just don’t have anything,’ I’m not gonna bust people’s balls about that,” clarifies Sosik. “I don’t wanna make them feel worse.”
Assistance finding an affordable burial starts early; Ingebritson tells me that when first responders respond to a death in the home, they “help them guide them to places where they can find a more affordable funeral.”
Still, after all that, 626 people had no other option but county cremation and burial. Without current demographic data, it’s hard to attribute the jump to any specific cause. Even Ingebritson and Sosik can only offer theories, although both bring up fentanyl; while overdose deaths have been on the decline since 2023, they remain significantly higher than they were five years ago.
Among the people here to pay their respects are three staffers from the People’s Memorial Association, which maintains a funeral assistance fund. I ask if they’ve seen an increase in requests for assistance amid skyrocketing final expenses.
“Absolutely,” responds Communications and Events Director Rachel LeBlanc, but since the fund is only donor-powered, “we’re really only able to help a couple of families a month.”
“What I’m thinking about is how many of those names are people who called me,” Administrative assistant Haley Costa says, “then I gave them the price and they didn’t call back.”
But there are always going to be those who don’t have anyone to contact—or nobody willing to claim them. Sometimes Sosik makes calls to next-of-kin letting them know about an unclaimed body with only cursing on the other line.
“It’s kind of upsetting when you’re caring more about this person that you don’t know than the people that do know,” he tells me.
The Rodriguez sisters tell me this won’t be the last ceremony they attend.
“And we have other [residents] that… don’t have family either,” says Yolanda. “So I mean, it’s gonna be the same place, the same thing, they’re gonna come here.”
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