Monroe County picks chief for crime lab
A veteran forensic scientist from California has been named administrator of the Monroe County Public Safety Laboratory.
Janet Anderson-Seaquist, who previously headed the crime lab for the Ventura County, Calif., sheriff’s department, was lured to Monroe County in part by the state-of-the-art lab now being built in downtown Rochester.
“It was an incredible opportunity,” Anderson-Seaquist said as she was introduced at a news conference Thursday morning.
Anderson-Seaquist, who started work here Jan. 4, said she also has found the crime-lab staff talented with admirable ability to work in the current antiqued lab in the county Public Safety Building.
“Sometimes I’m surprised they can still smile,” she said.
County Executive Maggie Brooks said Anderson-Seaquist was the clear favorite after a nationwide search.
“She’s going to take it (the lab) into a new decade and take it to a new level,” Brooks said.
The $30 million new facility, now under construction at the southeast corner of Broad Street and South Plymouth Avenue, is scheduled to open in the early summer of 2011.
Anderson-Seaquist, 47, headed a lab in Ventura County that is roughly the size of the one here. Before going there, she worked as a criminalist in the Phoenix, Ariz., crime lab.
