A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E - Colby-Sawyer College

Sealed evidence bags are brought to the exam table where they will be opened and prepared by Kim for a
serology exam. This exam will determine which bodily fluids are present.
Kimberly “Kim” Fish Rumrill ’84 is a warm, highly intelligent
woman with a calm demeanor and a ready smile.
She’s also a wife, mother of two teenagers, homemaker,
and dogged puzzle solver for the New Hampshire State Police
Forensic Science Laboratory in Concord, N.H. Her official title
is Criminalist II, and her expertise is serology, the science that
deals with serums, especially blood.
Kim’s major at Colby-Sawyer was Medical Technology, and
she says the hands-on skills she was taught gave her a strong
foundation for all the science fields in which she’s worked. She
remembers with fondness professors such as Kathy Springsteen,
Larry Dufault, Peter Mitchell and Helen Morrison. It was from
them that she learned anatomy and physiology, microbiology,
toxicology, child psychology, and the other sciences that
started her on her career path.
“I remember they all seemed to have a good sense of
humor,” Kim says, smiling at the recollection, “and the small
class sizes made it easy to connect with them. It allowed them
to know us as individuals
and to specifically tailor the
amount of help they offered
each of us.
“I never got bored
because a lot of the girls
in my dorm were Med
Tech students, so there was
always a lot of camaraderie.
I remember it used to get
a little cold sometimes on
the third floor of Burpee in
the winter, so we’d study in
the hall where we’d line up
our hot air popcorn poppers
down the hallway and get
them going while we drank
our two liter bottles of Tab.”
Kim’s father was a
detective, and law enforce-
ment was in her blood,
so to speak. After Colby-
Sawyer, she found a job as
18 COLBY-SAWYER ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Kim is seen here performing presumptive tests for bodily fluids. Among the
presumptive tests that can be done are those for common fluids such as blood,
sweat, saliva, and urine.
Biohazard waste containers are used for safe
disposal of used swabs and other detritus from the
forensic laboratory.
a medical technologist in Keene, N.H., at the Keene Clinic.
Meanwhile, she was developing an interest in forensic science
from reading her father’s professional detective magazines. She
soon found herself going back to school at the University of
New Haven (UNH) to study forensic science.
After graduation from UNH, Kim was told that you needed
to wait for someone to die or retire in order to get a job in the
N.H. State Police Forensic Science Laboratory. During a stint
as a medical technologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical
Center, Kim found that someone had, indeed, retired, and she
was chosen to fill the position. That was 15 years ago.
When asked what type of evidence she receives and from
whom, Kim says, “We receive our evidence from all police
agencies in the State of New Hampshire, and some even comes
from the FBI. We may receive evidence as diverse as swabs
collected from crime scenes, sexual assault kits from hospitals,
carpeting from a doctor’s office or a car, weapons, all sorts of
things, you name it.
“Because I’m a serologist,
once evidence reaches our lab,
I have the opportunity to participate
in solving crimes having
to do with blood or other
bodily fluids, as well as DNA,
which means I’m involved
in helping to solve sexual
assault and homicide cases. I
take the evidence, which has
either been bagged or placed
in appropriate containers, to
an examination room where
it’s spread out on clean, white
paper on an exam table.”
Kim is a serologist, but
a more colloquial term for
her expertise is blood spatter
expert. She explains that
phrase as she seems to do
everything, carefully and
patiently. “A blood spatter
expert is someone who studies