CEDAR HILLS — Tommy Miller has slowly warmed to the idea of seeing bags or fingernail clippings, hair strands and saliva samples sitting next to the ice cream in the family freezer.
Not very appetizing, for sure.
But the 15-year-old hopes the frozen collection of nail, hair and spit may someday be the key to identifying an abducted child or a battered violent crime victim.
As part of his Eagle Scout project, Miller plans to hand out DNA collection kits in neighborhoods near his parents' Cedar Hills home.
An adult adviser told Miller about DNA kits when the teenager started looking to pick a final Scout project, which must be done to earn the Eagle rank.
"I've spent about 35 hours doing this project and I think we can help the community with this."
Miller and other teens in his troop are putting together 500 DNA collection kits that will be passed out this weekend.
Inside the kits are step-by-step instructions, latex gloves, cotton swabs, papers to hold clippings and a double set of plastic bags to cover the samples when placed in the freezer.
The gloves were donated by police officers. Gretchen Gordon, who works for Cedar Hill's city government, gave Miller a primer on the need to be meticulous when collecting samples.
"He has a really good set of instructions with the bags," Gordon said, "because it doesn't matter if you collect a sample if you don't do it right or protect it."
Dennis Harris, a Utah County Sheriff's deputy, said the kits are beneficial to police investigators — but only "if done right."
"The sample needs to have integrity," he said.
The samples of DNA are better than photographs, said Miller's mother, Donna. No two people share the same DNA, which is each person's genetic blueprint.
Stored DNA samples also have helped police find names of runaways, Alzheimer's patients who have wandered away from a caretaker's home and the casualties of a natural disaster.
Freezing samples keeps bacteria from destroying a sample.
Temperature fluctuations can damage the sample, however.
E-MAIL: haddoc@desnews.com