Community Compassion Outreach, the nonprofit that opened a warming center in November and continues to host substance abuse and therapy sessions, is holding a memorial on July 22 for a man found dead near X-Rock last month.
The memorial will be held from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at Schneider Park, Donna Mae Baukat, executive director of CCO, said Friday.
The memorial is for John Gregorian, 52, whose body was found by a friend and reported to first responders the morning of June 1. He was living in an unsanctioned homeless camp surrounded by trees near X-rock, Durango law enforcement said on June 2.
The cause of Gregorian’s death has not yet been determined.
La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith said an autopsy was performed, although a final autopsy report has yet to be been returned by a pathologist. Tissue samples were sent off for a toxicology report, but those results have not yet been returned.
She said she suspects she knows the cause of death but declined to share her thoughts pending the final autopsy report.
A month and a half after Gregorian’s death, authorities have been unable to connect with his relatives, she said. He belonged to a church in Florida where church members and acquaintances are trying to raise money for a cremation, burial or other after-death rites.
She does not know the name of the Florida church and said Williams Funeral Home, which she said is organizing a cremation for Gregorian, has been in contact with the pastor of the church.
In a call to the funeral home, a representative said he does not know the church’s name and is unaware of any fundraising efforts.
An email to Daniel Schulz, general manager of Williams Funeral Home, requesting comment was not immediately returned.
“I think we’re probably going to end up considering him abandoned, but there was no family,” she said. “The church people and their friends had no family names.”
She said abandonment is not common in the coroner and funeral home world, but once in a while someone dies and his or her family cannot or will not take care of their funeral or cremation. In those cases, the coroner and funeral homes will work together to organize a cremation for the deceased.
A Durango man who goes by the name of Thomas Tyler on Facebook commented on The Durango Herald’s original story about Gregorian’s death, saying he was Gregorian’s friend and is the person who found him dead and reported him to first responders.
The Herald messaged Tyler on Facebook but did not immediately receive a response.
Smith confirmed Tyler had been involved in helping with final arrangements for Gregorian.
Baukat, CCO director, works regularly with members of the unhoused community and said Gregorian attended CCO’s warming center regularly when it was active.
“He had great plans and had been working toward saving for an RV. We’ll be asking our clients if they’d like to schedule a memorial for John,” she said in an email to The Durango Herald in June.
On Friday, she said Gregorian was an intelligent person and “very eager” and “very anxious” to become an adviser on CCO’s advisory committee with his own ideas about services the facility might be able to provide to Durango’s homeless community.
“We’re going to bring people together, whoever attends, and we’re going to have a memorial there at the park,” she said.
In April, CCO ended its warming center services, which allowed unhoused people and their dogs into the Durango Christian Church twice weekly to escape the cold, charge their phones and rest.
The warming center services were replaced with CCO’s Safe Talks in Recovery program, an arena for people to vent their frustrations and talk about their challenges with substance abuse. Baukat said then the STiR program was more engaging and productive than simply letting the homeless rest.
But on Friday, she said the Durango Christian Church is reopening its doors to again provide the homeless a shelter from the outdoors, a space to charge their phones and other services.
Baukat isn’t calling it a warming center or even a cooling shelter, but a compassion center where people can meet other people, she said.
“We’d love to have them again. We’re not going to force them to get into Safe Talks,” she said. “But we feel that is really better – that we have them come back so they have a place where they can charge their phones and get client services like they did when the warming center was going on.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
