Dr. Valerie Rao has been coming to Bermuda since 1994.

But, unlike most of the Island's visitors - whether here for work or pleasure - Dr. Rao has never had time to let herself go in Bermuda. In fact, she has never really had time to visit anywhere other than King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and the Police station.

Dr. Rao has just completed her third year as the Chief Medical Examiner for Florida's District Five. She lives in Leesburg, a town about 35 miles from Orlando, but her office covers five counties. Previously she spent 18 years and nine months working in Dade County out of Miami, in an office that periodically sent her to work on cases in the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Bermuda.

After she moved to Leesburg, she explained, she stopped travelling to the Turks and Caicos as well as the Caymans, as the Miami office was closer to those Islands. However Dr. Rao continues to travel to Bermuda at short notice to lend her expertise as a forensic pathologist.

General pathology, she explained to The Royal Gazette, deals with hospitals and laboratory work, and general pathologists conduct hospital-based autopsies searching for causes of death such as an illness.

A forensic pathologist, however, is called in when a death is sudden, unexpected or unnatural. Jobs such as Dr. Rao's have been glamorised in, for example, the CBS hit series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", or in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta books written by Patricia Cornwell.

And the nature of her work is such that Dr. Rao spends only hours on the Island at a time. On a recent trip she said she was actually able to stay in Bermuda overnight. On that trip she arrived at the airport at 4.15 p.m., had finished conducting the autopsy by 2 a.m., and left again on the 7.30 a.m. flight.

"The turnaround is very fast," she said, giving the example of another visit when she arrived, conducted the autopsy, and barely had time for a shower at the Police station before hopping a plane back to the US again. "It's usually less than 24 hours, it's very hectic."

Dr. Rao spent her childhood in her home of India, where she went to medical school.

"It's probably been 20 years since I've been back," she said. "Those are your roots, you never get it out of your system."

However: "This (the US) is my home, I've been here for 30 years".

It was her forensic science course at medical school that set her on the path which would lead to her post as Florida's District Five Chief Medical Examiner.

Flipping through the textbook, she said, she was completely fascinated by the science, and she knew that was what she wanted to do.

Finally, after 18 months of general pathology schooling in the UK and five years of forensic pathology schooling in the US, she achieved her dream of becoming a forensic pathologist.

"There's a lot more administration," she said of her post as a Chief Medical Examiner. "But I haven't given up the actual autopsies - we work on rotation, there are three other doctors in my office."

On her trips to Bermuda, brief as they are, Dr. Rao often takes the time to offer lectures to investigators to help them in their line of work. She has also been consulted on several sexual battery cases in Bermuda as well as in Miami and Dade County, and has co-authored two books.

"I didn't realise it would be such a long road," she told The Royal Gazette. "But if that's what you want to do - if you aren't happy doing what you're doing, you have to give it up."