Five Facts About Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco `81

Dr. Sammarco is board-certified neuroradiologist, the first radiologist elected as coroner in Ohio, the first female coroner for Hamilton County, the first Indian American elected to political office in Hamilton County, and a Cincinnati Country Day School alumnus.  

She was born in India and grew up in Milford.  
We moved to Milford from Clifton, and we might have been the first brown family in Milford. I started middle school in Milford, but my parents felt like I was breezing through school. Being an Indian family, having a good education is a big deal. My parents gave me choices – Summit, Country Day, and Seven Hills. I used to go to a British, Catholic-run school when I lived in India, so I knew I didn’t want that atmosphere. I took the test for Country Day and chose it because it was a tough school and tough to get into. My class had something like 65 students.  

She majored in electrical engineering. 
I wanted to go to medical school since I was a little kid. In undergrad [at University of Cincinnati in the McMicken Honors Program], I switched to electrical engineering from pre-med biology because one of my best friends was doing it and it seemed cool. Neil Armstrong was an aerospace engineering professor at the time, and they were building rockets and cool stuff in that program so I should have switched to that instead.   
 
My goal was always to go to medical school, but I didn't tell my parents I applied until the night before the medical school interview when I asked them if they would take me to get a suit for the interviews. A couple of weeks later I got my acceptance letter to the College of Medicine at UC, and I had early admission because I had enough credits to graduate. 
 
She initially wanted to become an obstetrician-gynecologist.  
During my ob-gyn rotation, I loved the ob part but didn’t like the rest of it. I always liked the surgical aspect and orthopedics because both work with my mechanical brain. And what I really liked about ortho was the radiology aspect, so I switched and started interviewing in radiology programs. I made $18,600 my first year as a resident.  
 
I love the neurology part of radiology, so I did a two-year fellowship and interviewed four programs. I loved the University of Chicago, which was led by Ruth Ramsey – an incredible trailblazer as a woman heading that program, which was unheard of the time - I hated the weather. California called me.  

She knows how to fly. 
Flying is something I was always interested in learning to do, so I took classes when I lived in California. I experienced a lot living there. There were three programs in California that I applied to, and I was accepted into my top choice – UCLA Medical Center. I experienced everything there – massive wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes. A 6.8 earthquake knocked my home off its foundation. But it wasn’t all chaos. It wasn’t until I moved out to LA that I really felt comfortable in my own skin; it was such a welcoming atmosphere. People wanted to know more about your culture, food, and music and be a part of it instead of acting like you’re weird for being different, which is how I felt in Cincinnati growing up. 

Abner Genece was a mentor to her.  
I had friends at school but the social aspect of Country Day was difficult. I felt like I didn’t really fit in anywhere because I was one of the only brown kids. But I had an unbelievable mentor – Abner Genece [former world languages teacher]. He was somebody I could share the trials and tribulations of being different with because he was Haitian. There was a lot of stuff culturally that I couldn't share with my parents as a first generation Indian kid – dances, dating, parties – so it was isolating in a lot of ways. But I always felt I could talk with him – somebody who cared about me and guided me to make decisions and not worry about judgment or censure. He's a big part of who I am today and how I stayed mentally stable as a teen. He's always been a part of major events in my life. He's now in his mid-80s and I try to talk with him once a month. He tells everybody that I'm his oldest daughter. We recently flew down and surprised him for his 85th birthday. Over 100 students and their spouses showed up for his 70th birthday party.  

Her priority is to keep this region as safe as possible. 
We are the only laboratory in Ohio that does purity testing on cocaine and methamphetamine and processes quantifications for the DEA and FBI; we’re happy to do it. We're fortunate to have the talent we have in this office, with our world-renowned scientists. Cincinnati is a great place to live and safer than most other places, but the opioid narrative in the last two years has changed. Prior to that, 85% or more of the overdoses were white adults. But now there is more fentanyl and with so many fentanyl-laced pills, it is affecting the Black community more. It’s a multi-billion-dollar business and they’re always trying to tap into age groups and markets they haven’t been able to get to. It’s why we try to educate younger kids, too.  
 
In this role as coroner, I can add some influence on what happens in our county. I pushed for a new crime lab, a new facility, and to get salary increases for the talent we have in this office. We don’t have enough people to fill the positions, so we must approach the job differently and be creative. One example of this is our usage of virtual autopsies. I can look at the scan and get a blood sample for a tox report and determine cause of death, so we don’t even need to do a full autopsy for many cases.   

Ultimately, I think we need to change the health curriculum across the country so we do a better job of warning kids about drugs, safety, how what you might see how there. You can teach them to be the best of the best in every subject but if they OD they're not going to get anywhere even with the biggest, best brain. Arming kids with the information about what to look out for, like what Country Day does with ROX [a girls empowerment program at the Middle School], is what we need to do.  I’ve seen enough victims in my office and if there is anything I can do to stop that then that's what I’m going to do.