Welcome to #HOMETOWNHUSTLE – a SweetwaterNOW series where we highlight hardworking individuals in our community.
This month we sat down with Kriste Vase Lev, owner of Vase Funeral Homes, who is marking 70 years of her family’s business in Sweetwater County. Lev has spent her life carrying forward work that started with her parents nearly seven decades ago, and today she’s the last of her immediate family counting the legacy.
The Backstory
Lev’s parents founded the funeral home in 1956. She said the business has never been “handed down” in the traditional sense so much as carried forward together, a family of five working side by side for decades.
“We worked together as a family, and as each person in our family passed, each of us took on more roles,” Lev said.
Lev is now the last of that generation still active in the business, something she has been part of, in one way or another, since she was 8 years old.
“This is not a job to me,” she said. “This is a way of life for me, and I’ve been in it and counting this business on and off since I was 8 years old. I’m blessed because I’m doing something I love, which is helping people every day.”
More Than a Funeral Home
The business has grown well beyond funeral and cremation arrangements over the years. As Sweetwater County has grown, Lev said, so has the range of services her business offers, including out-of-town arrangements, pre-arrangement planning and monument work.
“Times have changed since Sweetwater County has grown,” she said. “We, too, have grown by offering more specialized services.”
The funeral home’s website also offers grief support resources, planning-ahead tools, personalized memorial jewelry and design options for memorial services. Vase Funeral Homes is a member of the National Funeral Directors Association and the Wyoming Funeral Directors Association.
The business is also training a golden doodle therapy dog named Kona, who Lev said is still early in his training but already has an important job ahead of him.
“He’s beginning his journey to become a calm, steady presence for families navigating grief,” Lev said. “While he is still learning and growing, his role is simple yet meaningful: tough, quiet comfort, gentle companionship, and a warm presence in life’s most difficult moments.”
Answering the Phone at 3 a.m.
Lev said the posted office hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., but the job doesn’t run on a schedule. Staff are reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including families who are out of state and don’t know what to do after an unexpected death.
“They’re going to get a live person, not an answering machine,” she said. “Somebody who is experienced in what needs to happen.”
She described what that guidance often looks like in practice. If a family member passes away in the middle of the night or any time out of town, relatives can get confused and don’t know what they are supposed to do, she said, her job is to walk them through every step until they can get home.
“I want to make sure your loved one is in the care of the correct and proper hands, and that’s really important to people, because it’s very scary to leave a loved one out of town and not know what to do,” Lev said. “I think giving guidance has been a great thing for us.”
She’s also noticed the business changing over the years. Cremation has become more common, she said, and fewer people attend services than they used to.
A Family Philosophy
Lev said the values guiding her work trace back to her father, who taught her to treat every grieving family the way she’d want to be treated.
“Be real, be honest, be available,” she said, describing his guidance. “Society doesn’t have a lot of kindness, and I think kindness is a huge part of our service. I feel like we’re kind and caring and compassionate, and we try to meet every need.”
She said the emotional weight of the job is real, and staying grounded means leaning on the people around her, at work and at home.
“We have to have humor in what we do,” Lev said. “If we don’t have humor, it’s very tough to do this job. You’ll find most funeral homes have people who have a great sense of humor, or a dry sense of humor, just to be able to get through it.”
No Succession Plan, But No Regrets
Lev said she doesn’t have a formal succession plan and isn’t sure whether the business will stay in the family long-term. She said she’d like to retire eventually, though she doesn’t know when that might happen.
“Everybody else in my family passed away before they ever had a chance to retire,” she said.
What keeps her going, she said, is the trust families continue to place in her business, and everyone at Lev’s generation after generation.
“It’s an honor to have their trust to allow us to help them in their worst moments, and to have that trust means the world to me,” Lev said. “If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here. Once you’ve come to me, you become part of my family, because I was taught to treat people like your own family.”
“I could not do this without the help of my staff,” Lev said.
Vase Funeral Homes
- Address: 154 Elk Street, Rock Springs
- Hours: Open Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Available 24/7 by phone/appointment.
- Phone Number: (307) 362-5607
