BEFORE THE AITKENS, THE CORONER'S OFFICE HAD NOWHERE TO REFER GRIEVING PARENTS; COUPLE HELPS PROVIDE A DIGNIFIED FAREWELL.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``I gave her three families to call last week. This morning, I got three more.''

- Doyle Talbert

investigator with the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office

It's a rotten job, making the call. Picking up the phone and asking grieving parents where they want their baby's body sent.

Doyle Talbert's been making the call for 11 years now, and he hates it. Despises it. It eats at his gut like an ulcer, he says.

He knows once there is a long pause on the other end of the line, he's going to have to explain the cold, hard facts to someone who's hurting real bad right now.

Explain to them that if they cannot afford to pay for the burial of their child, he is bound by law to turn the body over to the county morgue for cremation.

No services. No viewing. No chance at closure. Nothing.

``It's all done very businesslike,'' Talbert says. ``For a few hundred dollars, they can claim the ashes. If not, they're commingled with others and buried.''

All very businesslike - except it isn't. Can't be. Not when you've got a grieving mother on the other end of the line begging you to give her another way to go - some way in which she can have a dignified farewell for her baby.

For 11 years, all Doyle Talbert's been able to tell hundreds of these parents without the financial means to bury their children is no. There was no other way.

Then Heather Aitken came along.

``It's like an immense load has been lifted off my shoulders,'' Talbert said Monday. ``A major relief. Now, finally, I can give these parents a number to call for help.''

Heather Aitken picks up the phone in her Woodland Hills home and dials the number Doyle Talbert has given her. The young woman's baby died of SIDS last week.

``I am sorry to hear about the loss of your baby,'' she begins. ``I lost my 6-month-old son, and I understand what you are going through. I would like to help.''

Before she says goodbye and hangs up, Heather will give the woman the number of a funeral home in her area that will bury her baby.

The cost will be paid for by Little Heroes, a foundation that Heather and her husband, Doug, have started in memory of their son, Chad, who died from an immune suppression reaction three weeks after getting his DPT shot in August 1995.

They are not rich people, the Aitkens - unless you can pay your way in life with compassion and caring. Their new foundation relies on the help and goodwill of others, and it's just getting off the ground.

But it has already found a raw wound out there like few other causes because somehow those half a dozen or so phone calls Doyle Talbert hates to make every week have been pretty much overlooked by society.

``When Chad died, Doug and I went through the experience with blinders on because we were not sure what was going to happen next,'' Heather says.

``We didn't know anyone else who had gone through the death of a child like this, or if there was anyone else, they refused to talk about it. We were not prepared for the expenses we were suddenly faced with, but luckily we had a family who helped with funeral expenses.

``But there are a lot of parents who do not have the resources to pay these very large bills,'' she said. ``The foundation will help families pay for funeral expenses, grief counseling and legal referrals when a child dies.

``Nobody realizes how much it hurts until it happens to them. Then people are too numb to want to deal with the death of a child. We deal with it and allow these parents to concentrate on getting through their grief.

``The isolation and devastation can be incredible. You become part of a club you don't want to join,'' Heather said.

A club where the divorce rate reaches 80 percent, as the death of a child rips apart marriages and lives.

So, together, they begin to fight back for the kids they call Little Heroes. Heather and Doug Aitken, and Doyle Talbert - joined by Rick Foster, general manager for Service Corporation International, which provides Little Heroes with low-cost burials at its mortuary parks.

Right now, the foundation only has the funds to help parents whose children were 5 years old or younger when they died, but hopefully with more grants and donations, the age limit will rise, Heather says.

If anyone is interested in helping Little Heroes or wants more information on the foundation, call Heather at [phone].

Dennis McCarthy's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

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PHOTO Heather and Doug Aitken, who themselves lost a baby, formed a foundation to aid other grieving parents.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News