Its main task is to safeguard the property of people who die, until friends and relatives can be notified. It also administers their estates when there is no one else to do so. And it administers the affairs of people who, because of age or disability, cannot manage on their own. It also arranges to bury or cremate the poor when they die. A dozen guardians and administrators work out of the county's complex in Kearny Mesa.
Guardians deal with the living.
Administrators deal with the dead. On a recent afternoon, Price and Evans worked on the headline-making case of Karl John Walther. Walther died March 30, hours after firing shotgun pellets at passers-by in the College Area and wounding three people. A standoff ended when a police robot discovered his body inside his home on Catoctin Drive, near 63rd Street. Five days after the shooting, with the police investigation over, Price and Evans visited Walther's run-down home.