By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

While most little girls were playing with dolls, cadavers were more LaDonna Olden’s speed. As a youth, she even thought she’d be a coroner like her favorite character on the ’70s television show “Quincy.” Fast forward 40 years —playtime is over and Olden is all business.

She tried working in retail and as a drug and alcohol counselor, but the dead were calling her. LaDonna Olden is the new owner of the Thompson Funeral Home. Photo (c) Observer / Larry V. Dalton

She’s settling into her role as the new owner of Thompson Funeral Home in Oak Park. The Tulsa, Okla. native bought the business from Wilson Financial Group of Houston, Texas in January.

Olden, 51, has managed the business since 2000. When the conglomerate wanted to sell, she jumped at the opportunity.

“There was no question as to who was going to buy it,” she said. “If God puts it on you at an early age and that’s what you become, that’s what you were meant to be. This is my calling right here.”

Funerals are literally in her blood as Olden had family members who operated a People’s Funeral Home in Muskogee, Okla. when she was growing up. Today, she’s a state-licensed embalmer, funeral director, cemetery manager and crematory manager.

“I’m everything. I wear all the hats,” she said.

Thompson Funeral Home is one of two African American owned funeral homes in Sacramento; the other, Morgan & Jones, is also located in Oak Park.

“The funeral business is always competitive,” Olden said. “I’m going to set myself apart as a new owner by doing some things that are different.”

Funeral education, she says, is a big part of that picture.

“We need to educate ourselves, especially in the Black community. It’s something most people don’t think about, they don’t want to think about dying. If you get educated in funeral services, it’ll be easier to make decisions,” Olden said.

Plans also include “stepping up the level of service to families.” Unlike many other funeral homes, Olden already does home visits to assess what clients want. She will also be redesigning her showroom to feature an interactive computer display for clients to choose different casket options with the touch of a screen that’s mounted on a wall.

Office Manager Joyce McDonald says her boss’ personality and compassion puts her ahead of the rest.

“She really tries to help people. She wants to minimize the amount of their grief,” she said.

Thompson Funeral Home, both McDonald and Olden shared, is also big on pre-need services. Pre-need services allows families to make and pay for funeral plans before they’re actually needed, giving them the peace of mind that these vital arrangements are already taken care of.

McDonald said she’s seen far too many families having to put on car washes and other fundraisers to pay expenses after a family member dies.

“They’re reactive instead of pro-active,” she said.

Although death, for her, is a business, Olden says she’s human and admits that it’s hard at times to separate herself from it all. “Sometimes I’m in a funeral crying as hard as the family.” As a mother of three, the death of youth, she adds, is particularly difficult.

“But this is what we’re in the business of,” she said. “You can look at death as unfortunate or fortunate, we’re fortunate when a family decides to use us.”

Olden prides herself in being good at what she does.

“When someone dies, I want that last visual to be ‘ oh, they look so peaceful, it’s like they’re sleeping,” she said.

While Thompson Funeral Home serves a multicultural clientele, Olden is particularly proud of the work she does embalming African Americans. Many morticians, she said, don’t do the process with preserving Black skin tones in mind, so the deceased may not look as they did in life.

Prior to coming to Sacramento to run Thompson Funeral Home, she worked for Charles A. Jones at Jones Mortuary in East Palo Alto. So “impressed” with his knowledge and expertise, Jones is the only one she says she’d trust to embalm her.

And yes, she does have her own funeral planned out in advance.

“I know how I want things to be,” she said.