It took only a few hours for Park County’s new coroner to get his first case.

Cody Gortmaker was sworn into office Tuesday morning and before noon, he was responding to the death of a local resident and ordering an autopsy to determine the cause.

Fortunately, Gortmaker has been preparing for the role for months — and he brings extensive experience with death as the director of Ballard Funeral Home in Cody.

“I was ready,” he said.

Gortmaker is taking over from Tim Power, who served as Park County’s coroner for the past 18 years. He plans to make some changes to the office.

Gortmaker told county commissioners Tuesday that he anticipates hiring five deputies, who will all be new to the roles. They’ll each complete a roughly $800 online training course offered by the Missouri-based Death Investigation Academy through the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy.

Gortmaker said having a larger number of deputies will offer options when he needs someone to fill in or assist. Power used two deputies. Gortmaker also noted that deputies are compensated on a per-case basis, so “they don’t get paid unless they are working.”

The new coroner specifically mentioned his intent to hire Zach Thompson of Powell — a director at Thompson Funeral Home and one of Gortmaker’s opponents in August’s Republican primary election. By having a deputy coroner in Powell, “the sheriff’s deputies and police department won’t be waiting for us to travel,” Gortmaker said. “So I think it’ll be better for everybody that way, too.”

As he comes into office, Gortmaker is inheriting a more than half-million dollar coroner’s building in Cody that was championed by his predecessor and completed in early 2021. However, Gortmaker indicated to commissioners that he doesn’t expect to need the new facility all that often, saying, “I’ll utilize [it] as much as I can … just because it’s been built.”

In a follow-up interview, Gortmaker noted that, with no pathologists willing to travel to Cody, autopsies must be conducted elsewhere. As a result, he said the Park County coroner’s facility is essentially “a place to keep bodies safe until the family decides on a funeral home.”

“So there’s really no professional services being rendered there,” he said.

Power, who owned Ballard Funeral Home before Gortmaker, saw the new facility as a way to make the coroner more independent and less reliant on a connection to a funeral home. For decades, the coroner’s office temporarily stored bodies from the Cody area in a cooler located at Ballard Funeral Home. In 2019, Power said using space at the business was no longer an option, kick-starting the push for the new building.

On Tuesday, however, commissioners indicated they may partner with Ballard again. Commissioner Lee Livingston suggested a formal agreement with the funeral home that would allow the county to use the business’s equipment as an emergency backup, in the event the coroner’s coolers fail.

“Sure,” said Gortmaker. “Not a problem.”

Meanwhile, he’s also changing the way the office handles autopsies.

Power relied on the services of Dr. Thomas Bennett of Sheridan, who often conducted autopsies at Big Horn County’s facility in Basin. However, Dr. Bennett is retiring and Gortmaker wants to return to having autopsies performed in Billings. He immediately tried that approach on Tuesday, with his first case resulting in an autopsy conducted by Montana State Medical Examiner Dr. Walter “Willy” Kemp.

“We’ll see how that goes,” Gortmaker said, but “it seems like it’ll be a good relationship for the coroner’s office and for law enforcement.”

He also said autopsies in Billings should bring lower costs.

For the first six months of his term, Gortmaker will be working off the $154,311 budget crafted by his predecessor. He’ll propose his own budget for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.