Marine reservist Ryan Sawyer was at a college frat house, a red Solo cup in his hand, when he got the call from his platoon sergeant in October 2004.
"Sawyer, pack your stuff. You're going to Iraq."
His assignment was something he'd never considered: Scraping up bodies from battle zones.
He'd hoped to get through college, serving his country over the summers and on weekends. But it was not long before he found himself unloading the first of many dead from a helicopter.
"I remember, vividly, a single drop of blood came out of one of the body bags and landed on my boot," he said. "That moment, it really, really dawned on me that this is a real situation where real Americans are losing their lives."
A roulette wheel of thoughts and emotions spun through the young Marine's mind, settling on one: "Game on. It's time to get serious about this."
Home from war, Sawyer, 24, is still dealing with splatters of blood.
He does it through Biotrauma Inc., a small company in Gainesville, Ga., that he founded in 2006 with his war buddy, Benjamin Lichtenwalner, 27.
With a staff of 10, they clean up death scenes throughout the southeastern United States.
"When we go into a suicide, we see stacks of bills on the table," Lichtenwalner said. "You can see they haven't attended to their financial affairs for some time. That's fairly common. .. I think a lot of it has to do with financial pressures."
Suicide is the 11th-leading cause of death, with someone in America killing themselves every 15.8 minutes, according to The American Association of Suicidology.
Statistics are unavailable to establish whether the recession has resulted in more suicides. Data lag by more than three years, and most suicides go unreported in the media, being private affairs.
Anecdotally, though, the news has been rife with high-profile financiers, investment managers and corporate executives ending their lives, including David Kellermann, who was acting chief financial officer at embattled finance company Freddie Mac (FRE).
In the past, suicide rates have increased during times of economic crisis, with the peak occurring in 1933 as unemployment reached 25%, according to the suicidology group.
The most common way people do it is with a gun, which can be messy.
"Sometimes you can have the walls completely painted with blood," Lichtenwalner said. "And it's not just blood. There's skull fragments. There's tissue. There's this fatty substance that will stain the walls. You can't even scrub it out. You just have to cut that section of the drywall out."
The most challenging jobs involve decomposition. Bodily fluids leaching into floorboards. Horrific odors saturating the air. Maggots in unimaginable numbers:
"We've actually had to shovel them up," Lichtenwalner said. "It gets pretty nasty."
Sawyer and Lichtenwalner got used to this kind of work in Iraq.
Most people dealing with a home tragedy try to do it themselves, suffering intense emotional exposure to the bloody reminders and risking blood-borne illnesses.
Rarely, if ever, can they get up all the blood. Biotrauma, on the other hand, removes every last corpuscle, thoroughly disinfects, and direct-bills homeowners' insurance companies for services that can cost between $1,000 to $10,000.
Most of Biotrauma's business is residential, and homeowners' insurance typically picks up the tab.
People also die in hotel rooms, but Biotrauma has trouble attracting their business, Lichtenwalner said.
"Hotels, wanting to be cheap, call in somebody with a mop and a bucket," he explained. "That happens all the time."
Rooms may look clean -- but maybe they aren't.
"Hepatitis B can live outside the body for up to two weeks," Lichtenwalner said.
Sawyer and Lichtenwalner say Biotrauma is more than just another dirty business. They are often on the scene as the police are leaving and the clients are overwhelmed with shock and grief. For the two Marines, it's a mission.
"You're familiar with the term, "No man left behind'?" said Sawyer. "That's the sacred mission that I got to take part in. .. I got to serve my country and make sure that everybody got back home.
"Even though they were deceased -- it's so important that the mother of that soldier gets to have a real funeral back home.
"That is providing real closure," he said. "And we brought that same mentality into our business .. around that feeling of closure to these horrific incidents."
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. The column is published each Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. ET. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)
