JOPLIN, Mo. — In Bob Heath’s 20 years as a police chaplain, he has stood on the doorsteps of hundreds of families to deliver the worst possible news: that their loved one has died. He has tended to the frayed psyches of victims of natural disasters like the one in Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina. He has led training seminars around the country in the delicate art of death notification.

But as Mr. Heath waits here to inform yet another family that a son or daughter, mother or father, cousin or aunt is indeed among the more than a hundred bodies that authorities have been painstakingly identifying since Sunday’s tornado, his own eyes well up again and again. Unlike the chaplains who have flown and driven to Joplin to help after the nation’s deadliest tornado in 60 years, Mr. Heath lives here.

“In Gulfport, I drove down streets that I had no idea what they looked like before, and I didn’t know the people at all — I had no relationship with them,” said Mr. Heath, who wears a police radio on his belt and a vest with “CHAPLAIN” spelled out across the back.