L.A. TACO met with retired deputy medical investigator Vidal Herrera, 74, at his headquarters, discreetly tucked away in El Sereno. Entering through the gates, we found ourselves surrounded by beautiful copper sculptures, while a back fence was lined with barbed wire and copper figures of male torsos.
Towards the gate, a large graffiti mural read, “1-800-AUTOPSY.”
Herrera’s long rap sheet as a medical investigator and business owner spans from identifying the "Night Stalker” via fingerprint to creating coffin furniture for the vampire series “True Blood.” In addition to Herrera’s corpse-flaying skills, his hobbies include showcasing a bright red 1950 Studebaker Champion as part of a lowrider club and painting, as seen here in his famous illustration detailing East Los Angeles.
Herrera’s roots are solidified in Los Angeles’s soil, having ancestry going back to the Mexican-American Repatriation Act, an operation during the Great Depression that targeted people with Mexican ancestry, including United States citizens, to deport them to Mexico. Over a million people were deported, and it is estimated that at least 60% were citizens.
“My grandmother, my grandfather, my father, my uncle, and my two aunts. All born here at General Hospital,” Herrera tells L.A. TACO. “They were rounded up at the Plaza De Cultura on Olvera Street. They were taken by train, forced to Juarez, Mexico. My uncle was killed while he was there.”
He says that the deportation operations that occurred on June 6, 2025, mirror those that impacted his family years ago. Last year, Border Patrol raided Ambiance Apparel, more than a mile away.