When a West Valley woman suffered an accident over the weekend and died in her backyard, one of the first things police officers tried to do was to notify her husband.

Investigators learned the man was visiting relatives in Idaho but had difficulty communicating with him. Eventually, police sent out a description of his vehicle to officers throughout Idaho and Utah, asking for help in locating him.

For many family members, it's their worst nightmare: Hearing a knock on the door at an hour when most people are asleep, and finding a pair of law enforcers standing on the porch.

The officers will typically ask if they can come in and then if the relative would like to be seated. But before the officers say anything, most family members have already figured out why they are there. They can read it in the eyes of their visitors.

Still, it doesn't make what the officers have to say next any easier.

"We're sorry to inform you that your loved one has been killed in an accident."

For officers of any agency, making such notifications is one of, if not the, hardest part of their job. And no matter how many times an officer has had to deliver the tragic news, it never gets easier.

Many times when a story is written in the media about a fatal incident, police will withhold the name of the victim "pending notification of next of kin."

But sometimes making that notification isn't always easy.

Sometimes the next of kin are vacationing out of state or country, sometimes they are estranged from the family, or sometimes, as in the case of transients, it's been decades since the victim has had any contact at all with their families.

"We won't just leave messages. We need personal contact with somebody. If we can't find immediate family, we'll find extended family or neighbors or clergy," Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Don Hutson said.

If family members are out of state, law enforcers will typically call a police agency or local clergy in that state to make the notifications.

Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Kellie Oaks said in one notification incident she had, Honolulu police were contacted to notify parents vacationing in Hawaii.

But sometimes it takes investigators extra effort to find family members, and they need to release the name of the victim in hopes of finding the parents.

Salt Lake police still have not been able to locate family members of a bicyclist hit by a car on June 22. Sidney Maybine, 58, a Vietnam War veteran, was killed after he was rear-ended by a 51-year-old woman who apparently went into diabetic shock while driving.

Notifications affect not only the lives of the person receiving the news but the officer delivering it as well.