Nick Glasier photo: Gary Telgenhoff spoke at Mercyhurst College on Tuesday, March 16.

The Mercyhurst College community experienced an out-of-the-ordinary presentation when Gary Telgenhoff, or “DrT” as he is known to many, spoke about his profession.

Telgenhoff, a man with an aptitude for many different skills, spoke as part of the Mercyhurst Student Government’s five-speaker series.

Educated at Eastern Michigan University with a master’s degree in biology and physiology, Telgenhoff has a colorful background, starting with medical school at Michigan State University while finishing his MS. After attaining his degrees, he served five years of pathology residency in various places in Ohio and then relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada.

He is employed at the Clark County Coroner’s Office in Las Vegas as a Forensic Pathologist and Deputy Medical Examiner and also serves as a forensic consultant on the television shows “CSI” and “Bones,” and to various authors.

He can also be recognized from a public service announcement in which he talks about a girl’s main cause of death being ecstasy.

In addition to these, he has also appeared on numerous television shows, including “Nancy Grace,” “Snapped,” “Oxygen,” “700 Club” and the “Mummy Road Show.”

At his present job, he sees approximately 1,000 bodies a year. He performs autopsies on around 450 of them, and of those, 45 are homicides.

In his spare time, Telgenhoff is a rock musician for several different bands. His music has appeared on “CSI,” and his newest CD includes songs with musicians such as Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult.

His daytime work inspires his music.

“My music is about what I do,” Telgenhoff said. “I was a musician before I went to medical school, but I had no ideas for tunes. As soon as I got into the profession, ideas started falling from the sky and I can’t stop writing. Everything I do really wraps up into one strange package.”

His presentation took the audience from his beginnings as a musician through his years with “CSI” to what he does now. To start it off, Telgenhoff said he would show how his job really is.

He said to “find something you like.” Prestige and money don’t matter as much as doing something that you can enjoy, he said about his early beginnings in rock bands.

His PowerPoint was interactive and filled with sounds to keep the audience interested while hearing about his life story.

By the end of his presentation, the audience not only knew about Telgenhoff himself, but also about the fields of pathology and rock ‘n’ roll.