Little is known about Burns, but when she died in 1992 she left her estate to UNLV to create a scholarship fund for cocktail waitresses who wanted to attend the university part-time presumably because she once had been a cocktail waitress. Two years after her death, and after squabbling among relatives who thought they stood to inherit a fortune, that scholarship will become a reality. UNLV owes it all to Clark County Public Administrator Jared Shafer and his handful of assistants who stepped in to settle the dispute and carry out Burns' final wishes. He's also stepped in to settle family feuds when a will is contested, or to arrange the sale of property and personal items nobody wants.
Furniture is stacked to the ceiling in a warehouse.
Outside sit 25 cars, several trucks, mobile homes and boats. There's even a shelf holding the cremated remains of people whose relatives haven't been located. The public administrator opens about 1,100 decedent services, or dead-body cases, a year. About 300 go to probate court, where earthly goods are divvied up. Shafer's office handles the estates.