Iowa profile: Fascinated by forensics

CEDAR RAPIDS — From a young age, Amy Rehnstrom — now an assistant professor in forensic science and microbiology at Kirkwood Community College — has had a strange fascination with death.

She loved Barbies growing up but unlike her friends, who had their Barbies go on dates, hers would get into 'horrific accidents' that required her to do 'autopsies,' she said.

'They were always missing limbs,' she continued. 'My mom was like, what is wrong with you? ... I was a weird kid. It was a wonder my mom didn't drop me off in front of the orphanage.'

Rehnstrom's curiosity didn't stop with dolls.

A visit to her uncle's house when she was 12 changed her life, she said, when she found a copy of a gruesome painting of a medieval surgery. While most kids might be squeamish, she was intrigued.

But it wasn't until she saw 'Quincy M.E.' — a mystery-drama television series from the late 1970s about a medical examiner who investigated suspicious deaths — that Rehnstrom realized she could turn her fascination into a career.

With that, her sights were on forensic science.

In high school, Rehnstrom worked at Cedar Memorial as a funeral assistant. But then-funeral director Ralph Osenbaugh guided her away from the business, telling her she'd 'give every funeral away for free,' Rehnstrom recalled.

'That's how I ended up going the science path,' she said. 'And he's right. I would have gone bankrupt in a year.'

Rehnstrom met with the Linn County Medical Examiner at the time, Dr. Percy Harris, who 'took hours out of his day' to talk to her about the career. Together they determined medical school probably wasn't for her, but perhaps lab work was a better fit.

Harris suggested she meet with the head of the crime lab in Des Moines, who 'brought her down to earth' and told her 'the realities of the career,' she said.

Still, she was determined that's what she wanted to do.

In 1986, Rehnstrom graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a bachelor's degree in biology and went on to get a master's degree in forensic biology at Southeast Missouri State University in 1988.

After graduating with her master's, she worked for a biochemical company in St. Louis for two years. She decided to return to school to get her Ph.D. because she missed teaching — something she got a taste of in graduate school, she said.

In 1995 she graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and began sending out resumes to 'every crime lab in the world,' she said.

'I'm not kidding, I sent over 250 resumes,' she said. 'I would have gone anywhere to be a forensic scientist.'

She also sent one as a joke to Oscar Meyer to drive the Wienermobile.

'Guess who offered me a job first,' she laughed. But her father said there was no way she'd 'drive a hot dog with a Ph.D.'

Rehnstrom ended up working for the Illinois State Police Department's lab in Chicago for nearly a decade, where she tested DNA from crime investigations including sexual assaults, homicides, criminal paternity cases and remains identification.

The work was challenging and sometimes emotionally draining, but satisfying.

'Forensic science only exists because bad things happen,' Rehnstrom said. 'Someone is a victim. So there's nothing happy about it, but cases stick with you.'

The most rewarding case Rehnstrom completed was one where a skeleton of a young child was found buried near a building in Chicago. The medical examiner's office could estimate age but couldn't determine the gender, she said.

'I was able to do DNA on that tiny little skeleton and show that it was a little girl,' she said.

Discovering the gender 'blew the case wide open,' she said. 'They knew where to find her records and got a deathbed confession from her mother,' who admitted to killing her daughter, Rehnstrom said.

Her work at the crime lab developed into a 'very keen interest in death investigation,' she said, which led her to get a graduate certificate in death investigation from the University of Florida, where she now is finishing a second master's in veterinary forensics.

As much as she enjoyed working in the crime lab, though, she said it sometimes felt like 'a factory. So in 2006, she returned to her hometown to teach forensic science, microbiology and veterinary forensic science at Kirkwood.

Today, students come to her often saying they want to go into forensics, inspired by the 'CSI' or 'Criminal Minds' television shows, she said.

'I don't roll my eyes and say get out of here, because I was them,' she said. 'What I'm trying to do is be like my mentors were for me. I honor them by paying it forward and being a good role model to students. ... I'm just there to put them on the right path.'