Dead serious about his work

David Goforth used to faint at the sight of his own blood. "I'd just drop," he said with a shrug.

He's also a self-described "emotional person."

"I can cry just thinking about an event," he added.

No big deal unless you do what this 58-year-old Citrus Heights man does for a living.

He cleans up crime scenes. He's around blood (other people's) and emotion (anger and grief) just about every time he reports for work.

He's been doing it for 14 years. Suicides, murders, murder-suicides, collisions, collapses, falls and freak accidents. Goforth is there with mop and mask and a host of cleaning agents.

Civic leaders may not be excited to learn that 2007 has been Goforth's busiest year to date.

Thanks to shows such as "CSI," those who process crime scenes and piece together evidence have gained in prestige. More people are entering the field of forensic science, perhaps thinking it's a career filled with people glib and good-looking, computers that never crash and up-tempo theme music.

In the real world, at least, the glamour stops when the balding and bespectacled Goforth shows up. Hired by municipalities or private citizens, he doesn't gather the evidence; he gets rid of it. After 1,565 cleanup events, he has seen just about everything.

Though he has thrown up only twice and has yet to pass out on duty, his job has never been easy. "Every day, something will happen that will make me wonder how could I possibly be doing this," he said.

His company, Hyjentek, is based out of his home, his Toyota Matrix filled with everything he needs to get the job done.

In the Sacramento area, the affable and intense Goforth is something of a pioneer in the industry, a singular eccentric who relieves stress by playing jazz on his accordion, a man who admires James Bond to the extent that he says he once turned down the chance to have his company listed first by the Department of Public Health "because I wanted to be Number 007."

When asked what his friends think of his unseemly occupation, Goforth answers with a straight face.

"Friends? I don't have any friends."

Goforth started Hyjentek amid growing concern over the dangers of contaminated blood from the AIDS virus. An industry was born when authorities realized that the aftermath of crime and crash scenes presented lingering health dangers.

His first job was cleaning up a gunshot suicide at a 24-hour restaurant in Auburn. It was 1994. "I went into a real deep focus – what needs to be done first, what needs to be done second. I was traumatized, but I didn't know it right away," said Goforth.

"It took 250 events before I would no longer see people when I went to sleep at night, where I would no longer sense the emotions that were transferable."

These days, Goforth has learned enough about cleaning and coping that he has created a copyrighted manual to train others.

The education begins the moment you meet him at his house.

He smiles but declines to shake hands. Turns out, he suffers from painful arthritis, a condition that makes it hard for him to play his beloved accordion, which he keeps next to his computer in his home office.

"I thought I'd show you something you've never seen – that is not disgusting," he said, walking toward his door. He proceeds to re-create how he enters a domestic crime scene, running through a meticulous checklist of what he is thinking and doing before he cleans one drop of blood.

"You ring the doorbell – preferably ring the doorbell than knock. But you're not this close. You're way back here, eight feet back. You have nothing in your hands. You enter the house and you look at no person as you enter. Your hands are open and you try and get as close to the contact person as you can – on the left side. They can stab you if they want to with their right hand. But (the left) is the side of friendliness."

Goforth does a lengthy aside on the subject of color, how he uses yellow – yellow uniforms for his interns, a yellow tarp to cover the blood – for its calming effects.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Blair Anthony Robertson, (916) 321-1099.