By Tom Roeser

Chicago is famous for losing people; but after a while they often turn up in a trunk?dead but accounted for. But yesterday Rosalie Schultz, 64, really got lost. She was already dead but had been transported to the Cook county medical examiner?s morgue for an autopsy. Then somebody filed her away in a cooler. When the funeral director came to pick her up, nobody could find her.

Thereupon the TV cameras raced to interview the interim chief medical examiner. He said with a shrug that he had searched all the coolers but thus far had not located Rosalie. Then there was a hurried cross-examination of the morgue staff. Had somebody forgotten to put a tag on her toe? Or a wrong tag? Tension mounted until an attendant who was sweeping up last night found Rosalie. She was stuck away high upon a shelf behind the bulky body of a severely overweight lady. No one could see her.

The episode allowed Rosalie to keep her deadline date with her funeral. But it allowed the interim medical examiner to complain that with staff vacancies and overcrowing there must be more attention paid to funding the morgue. There are only 210 racks for bodies forcing the attendants to sometimes stack two to a rack.