CHICAGO _ Bill Muir was burning out as an operations manager for a beverage company and started looking for another career. When his brother-in-law used a handgun to kill himself, Muir decided to clean up his sister's place.
Her gratitude for his gesture of grit and kindness gave him an idea. Five months later, Muir became a crime-scene cleaner.
"I wanted to start helping people," he said one recent afternoon before fielding a call to clean up a homicide scene. "And seeing my sister's face after ... I knew this is how I can help."
In starting Bio-One Chicago last year, Muir and his wife, Dawn, joined the ranks of a profession that blends the demeanors of a funeral home director and grief counselor with a construction contractor who has a strong stomach and intimate knowledge of biohazard disposal. It also is a largely unregulated profession experiencing steady growth, fueled by increasing fear of contamination and disease, and awareness that the services exist, experts say.
"It's a hard thing to do," said Dr. Richard A. Jorgensen, coroner for the Chicago-area county of DuPage, who uses Aftermath Services LLC, an area firm, to clean the county morgue. "It's something that's little-understood."
Bio-One, Aftermath and other local companies are called to homicides, suicides, unattended deaths and the homes of hoarders. Sometimes, they are asked to clean the interior of cars and trucks where a trauma has occurred. Sometimes they are called to clear a meth lab.
"When people ask me what I do, they say, 'wow,' and then they get really interested," said Dan Reynolds, a lieutenant in the New Lenox Fire Protection District in suburban Chicago who started Chicago Crime Scene Cleanup in 2007 with his wife, Kelly, to supplement his income. "But I don't think they understand what all goes into it. They don't understand the emotional side of it."
Potential clients are enduring the worst time of their lives, cleaners say.
"Nobody calls me on a good day," Reynolds said. "Trying to understand what they're going through is a big part of it."
