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Lucy likens her job to being a mortician or life insurance broker.

Fellow morticians were also alarmed at the uptick in the number of bodies cremated by the Lamb Funeral Home, a respected, family-run establishment and pillar of the Southern California mortuary business for generations.

During a previous spike in gold prices, Clark said, people were asking morticians for permission to pull gold teeth from the mouths of dead family members.

"We go from service to lifesaving to mortician, dealing with dead bodies and then doing crowd control," the 40-year-old says.

I learned that in August 2023 from a mortician preparing to cremate my mother.