Clallam County’s first coroner in familiar role

Published 1:30 am Saturday, July 25, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Clallam County’s new coroner is new to the title but not to the job duties.

Rebecca Shankles started as the county’s first full-time coroner July 1, but she’s been performing coroner duties for about two years as a manager.

“The job has so far been fine,” Shankles said. “It’s basically what I had been doing. I’ve really liked it. It’s been very fulfilling.”

As the coroner, Shankles does all the main deputy death investigator jobs. She takes a death report from law enforcement, interviews law enforcement to determine if the death is jurisdictional, visits the scene to interview people and takes photos of everything, and removes the body.

“I don’t do autopsies,” Shankles said. “You have to be a forensic pathologist to do those.”

Any Clallam County death that needs an autopsy or a special investigation goes to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Shankles does determine cause of death, especially in cases when it’s obvious, such as a gunshot wound, a car wreck or a drowning, she said.

“It’s so interesting,” she said. “Every death is different.”

Shankles grew up in Texas and earned a bachelor of science degree in biology and a master’s of science in molecular biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

She first came to Washington state in 2009. She worked for several years in Seattle, first as a surgical pathologist, but she advanced to the work of death investigator after she was given more advanced cases.

“None of it bothered me,” Shankles said. “So when the death investigator position opened in Snohomish County, I applied for it because it was closer to where I was living and got me out of Seattle.”

She didn’t have the experience Snohomish County wanted for a death investigator, so she had to apply a few times for it, but then “they gave me a shot,” Shankles said. She started as the death investigator on March 1, 2017.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into Shankles’ family’s finances, with several people being furloughed from their positions. At the time, there was even talk of furloughing death investigators — although that never came to pass — so Shankles moved her family back to Texas, where the cost of living was less.

She secured a position as a death investigator in Travis County, Texas.

“I would have never left Washington,” Shankles said. “But it actually ended up being worth it because it opened the door to me returning to Washington in a much higher capacity.”

Shankles moved to Port Angeles in 2024 for the managerial position at the county, and when the coroner position opened up, she applied for it, went through the interview and screening process and was hired in June.

She was officially sworn into the role on June 24.

“This appointment is the culmination of a years-long transition to create an independent Coroner’s Office in Clallam County,” Undersheriff Lorraine Shore wrote in a social media post about Shankles’ hiring. “Following changes in Washington state law that prevented prosecuting attorneys from serving as coroners, District Court Judge David Neupert temporarily assumed the coroner’s duties to ensure continuity of service.”

The creation of the Coroner’s Office was first proposed as an amendment to county charter. Voters approved the measure with 81.6 percent of the vote last November.

“Rebecca brings an exceptional background in science, pathology and medicolegal death investigation to the position,” Shore wrote.

As the coroner, Shankles will oversee the expansion of office staffing with new employees hopefully to join by the end of the year. The county also has plans to move the Coroner’s Office from inside the courthouse on Fourth Street up to an adjacent property near where the new Joint Public Safety Facility will be built on Edgewood Drive across from the airport.

“The county has taken hold of the full Coroner’s Office and is giving us needed funding for it,” Shankles said. “I’m very excited. We’ll serve our community so much better once we have our own space.”

At that new location, the county also plans to have a county-run morgue, rather than relying on local funeral homes.

Outside of her job, Shankles said she loves the outdoors.

“One reason I’m looking forward to increasing staff is I love hiking and I haven’t been able to do that much for the last two years,” she said.

She also describes herself as a “homesteader.”

“I want to set up a garden with chickens and goats,” she said. “I also do a lot of herbal medicine. I’m just a homebody, really.”

________

Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.