‘MY BABY’: Vickey De Lacour on Wednesday recalls her son, Camp Pendleton Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner, who was killed in Iraq in a suicide bomb attack on Monday.
On Friday, it was the former sheriff's deputy sitting at the defense table, facing up to three years in prison for allegedly pulling an innocent motorist from his car at gunpoint and repeatedly threatening to shoot him last summer.
Friends say Coughlin, 48, hasn't been the same since a January 2003 motorcycle accident nearly took his life and left him with a severe brain injury.
In the 18 months that followed, the popular, well-known deputy lost his job, his position as a representative with the sheriff's union and - those close to him fear - his sanity.
"I would give anything I have to undo what happened to Tim," said Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg, in whose courtroom Coughlin worked for more than 16 years. "He's the godfather of my daughter. This goes beyond a working relationship. He's one of the best friends I ever had."
Coughlin's injury and subsequent psychological spiral has reverberated throughout the Orange County Superior Courthouse in Santa Ana, where he had been an iconic figure. A master of security and charm, he displayed an uncanny mix of gruff police savvy and academic intelligence, even graduating from law school in recent years.
"To say he was popular around here would be an understatement," Judge Froeberg said, at one point choking back his emotions. "There is not a week that goes by that somebody in the building doesn't ask me how Tim's doing."
The answer to that question is complicated.
On Friday, Coughlin stood in court alongside his defense attorney, John Barnett, softly acknowledging that he understood he was waiving his right to a preliminary hearing. He is scheduled to appear in court again on June 28 for arraignment on charges of brandishing a firearm, false imprisonment and attempted false imprisonment.
It would be his second criminal case in a year. In February, he was sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to three misdemeanors stemming from an after-hours rampage at Universal Studios last September.
According to police there, Coughlin drove his pickup truck through a chain barrier and tried to enter several closed attractions before commandeering a staff golf cart and scuffling with security officers.
As Coughlin left court Friday flanked by a handful of relatives and supporters, Barnett politely shook off questions about his client's future and recent past.
"We're at a very delicate point in the case," Barnett explained.
But a lengthy July 2003 arrest report filed by Anaheim police offers some clues about the depths of Coughlin's recent troubles.
The bald, 6-foot-4, muscularly built officer had been riding along Ortega Highway when he struck a deer and lost control.
Emergency crews found him critically injured near his battered motorcycle and the dead deer.
Coughlin had been on leave from his bailiff's job ever since.
His months of recovery included an assortment of powerful prescription drugs, including OxyContin and morphine, detectives were told.
By mid-July of last year, Coughlin was well enough to walk and drive, but friends and relatives were concerned about his mental well-being.
He had become convinced he was being followed by agents of a conspiracy hatched by former Gov. Gray Davis and members of the Republican Party. Coughlin would later tell police investigators he had evidence that the political officials were corrupt.
Out of fear, he told friends he had begun to carry a shotgun in his car and asked the police department to increase patrols around his Yorba Linda home. He set an Igloo ice cooler on his front porch filled with ice water and sodas to encourage officers to stop by.
On July 28, 2003, after his wife had gone to work, Coughlin drove to a Brea police substation, identified himself as a sheriff's deputy and anxiously demanded to speak with his friend and former fellow deputy Randy Smeal.
He was told Smeal was not available and eventually left.
As he drove from the substation, Coughlin spotted motorist Joe Alonzo, an employee at a local warehouse, and followed him to a nearby convenience store. There, he parked behind Alonzo and began copying his license plate number, according to the police report.
Alonzo assumed Coughlin was a police officer because he had pulled out of the substation parking lot. The 32-year-old Riverside man figured Coughlin had mistaken him for a crime suspect and approached Coughlin's driver-side window to identify himself.
"He said, 'Step away from the vehicle. I know what you and your compadres are up to. You could get shot for that!'" Alonzo said in an interview this week. "He sounded angry, crazy. He kept mumbling stuff. He said he could get me for conspiring to commit."
As Alonzo backed away, he noticed Coughlin reaching under his right thigh for something but never saw a weapon. Coughlin backed out and sped away. Alonzo drove to the Brea substation to report the incident.
Minutes later, Coughlin spotted a black Cadillac with tinted windows parking at Storage USA, a business in Anaheim about a mile and a half from the Brea substation.
He later told investigators he thought the car had been following him. In fact, Lorne John Taylor, a mortgage broker from Corona, was pulled over waiting for a moving truck to bring his office furniture for storage.
As Taylor, 62, walked up to the main entrance, Coughlin pulled a 9-millimeter Glock pistol, identified himself as an officer and began screaming commands at Taylor.
"He kept saying he was going to put a cap (bullet) in me," Taylor recalled this week.
Investigators later found the gun had a bullet in the chamber and a full clip of ammunition.
Taylor was forced to kneel on the blazing concrete with his hands behind his head. Seeing the commotion, employees of the storage business came out. Coughlin tossed them his Sheriff's identification and told them to call police.
The Anaheim officers who responded said they found Coughlin nervous, sweating and extremely emotional.
According to the report, "(h)e started yelling at some gardeners" standing nearby, and "anytime a car with tinted windows drove by he accused them of following him."
Officers convinced him to give up his gun and two knives, then took him to a mental health facility in Santa Ana for evaluation.
Taylor filed a lawsuit last month claiming the sheriff's department should have done more to ensure Coughlin didn't posses weapons.
Coughlin's last day as a deputy was April 30, sheriff's records show, though personnel privacy rules prevent department officials from disclosing details of his departure.
But despite his troubles, Coughlin hasn't lost everything.
"Tim has been loyal in the extreme," said Deputy Richard Emmons, 57, a fellow bailiff who has known Coughlin for 20 years. "I will be his friend as long as either one of us are alive."
Kareem Elsayed, outgoing president of the Muslim Student Union, said, "No one from any Jewish group has bothered to speak to us."
Rabbi Marc Dworkin, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said the "Muslim group on campus is so extreme, it is almost impossible for Jewish students to have a dialogue with them."
At issue is the meaning of a phrase on a stole that will be worn by about 15 Muslim graduates.
The Muslim Student Union says the Arabic message on the stoles - "There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the messenger of God" - is merely a tenet of Islam. Jewish groups suspect a terrorist subtext, given the incendiary speakers they say the Muslim students invited to UCI this year.
The Muslims counter that "some ignorant and malicious individuals" are spreading lies about the stoles, suggesting a terrorist allegiance.
School officials met with four Jewish groups Friday – Hillel; Anteaters for Israel; Alpha Epsilon, a Jewish fraternity; and Epsilon Phi, a Jewish sorority.
Randy Lewis, executive associate dean of students, said the meetings didn't allay all fears: "Many students still feel there is some subliminal message there."
Still, officials say students wear be allowed to wear the stoles, saying UCI "has a special obligation to protect free speech and free expression." Officials expect the graduation ceremony to be peaceful.
- Jeff Rowe
But that's part of the profile Garden Grove police are using as they try to solve a recent rash of home burglaries.
The baby is part of a scheme that works like this: A couple approaches a home with a baby in the mother's arms. They tell the occupant the baby's ball has rolled into her back yard. When the homeowner steps into the yard to search for the ball, one of the pair or an accomplice darts inside the house to steal the homeowner's purse.
The couple and baby have burglarized three Garden Grove homes in the past two weeks. The victims were all older women alone in the house when they were approached, Garden Grove police Det. Karen Sutherland said.
The baby and the ball is the latest twist on an old scheme Sutherland calls "distraction burglary."
"I'm sure when this ploy fades out, it'll be something else. They're just trying to get the victim in the back yard."
Traveling family groups have stolen from local homeowners before. Last summer, a woman with a baby lured at least four older women to their back yards to point out tree-trimming work they might need done while two accomplices ransacked the houses.
Other baby-toting burglars have offered various reasons for homeowners to step outside and leave the front door unguarded. Some claim to be showing the victim where they will be working at a neighbor's house, painting or doing tree trimming or landscaping. Others have posed as utility workers.
Garden Grove police describe the most recent suspects as a white or Hispanic man, 24 to 30 years old, between 5-foot-4 and 5-8. He has short black or brown hair and possibly a short goatee. He travels with a Hispanic woman, age 20 to 30, 5-3 to 5-4 tall, weighing 130 to 150 pounds, with shoulder-length brown hair.
And, of course, there's the 9-month-old brown-haired baby.
"If you've got strangers approaching you, be wary," Sutherland said. "If you're victimized, call the police immediately."
Irvine police declined to reveal the identity of the victim, a middle-aged white man, but authorities said they believed the man was killed in Long Beach.
The victim may be a man for whom a missing persons report was filed Thursday, Irvine police Sgt. Wally Prestidge said.
The cadaver was found by two adult model-airplane enthusiasts who went out to the field to fly their planes during their lunch break, Prestidge said.
- Sonya Geis
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Ellis' father, Jim Barkalow, won a Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II while flying the plane named after his infant daughter, whom he had yet to cradle in his arms in 1944.
This month during the 60th anniversary celebration of D-Day, Ellis, an Irvine resident and principal at Corona del Mar High School, took a nine-day voyage into her father's past, gaining insight into his World War II experience and getting to know her dad – now 83 – just a little better.
"I think he wanted to experience it again, but he wanted his children to experience it as well," said Ellis, 59. "The more I think about (the war), the more I think 'What an amazing accomplishment this was.' "
Ellis said today's Father's Day is special because she now realizes what a significant father she has. For his gift this year, she has put together a scrapbook of photos from the trip, the pictures extra-large because Barkalow has an eye disease.
Barkalow, nicknamed by his family "GG" for Great Grouch – he insists it stands for Good Guy – has gone to plenty of veterans reunions in the United States. But this one was different. He wanted his children with him.
Barkalow said he could tell story after story to his children, but until they walked the sands of Omaha Beach or saw the shell casings, they couldn't fully appreciate what he had experienced.
"It meant that they had a chance to see what I went though firsthand. It made it that much nicer for me," Barkalow said from his New Jersey home.
While sifting through photos from the trip, Ellis speaks with authority about where her father was. Using a map, she points out the flight route her father took to Europe.
Ellis doesn't recall her father talking about the war much during her childhood. But as Ellis entered her 30s, she became curious.
"That's why I received the Distinguished Flying Cross," Barkalow said once years ago, while they watched the movie "Memphis Belle." It depicted a scene from World War II, where a pilot waited over a target, ready to drop a bomb. The day was foggy, and a mistake would have killed innocent people in nearby schools and hospitals.
"What?" she had responded with a tone of astonishment. "And as I'm watching it, I'm thinking, 'Wow.' "
Barkalow said that on one bombing mission on a foggy day an engine blew, but he waited until it cleared so he didn't miss his target.
Barkalow, handsome with piercing blue eyes, was 22 and working for a telephone company in 1942 when he joined the Army Air Corps, which was later named the Air Force. A year later he left behind his high school sweetheart and new wife, Helen. He joined the effort on the Normandy coast about a month after D-Day.
It was especially sweet for Barkalow to have his daughter on this trip; it was while playing a game of bridge in a tent in France that he received the telegram saying that Sharon was born.
In France this month, Ellis watched as people approached her father, who was wearing a tag around his neck that read "W.W.II Veteran."
Over and over, people would approach Barkalow and say, "Thank you for what you did." One woman said "Thank you for liberating me. You saved me from a concentration camp."
"It was almost like my dad saved that particular person," Ellis said with pride.
"So little about what they did are things that we know about," Ellis said. "I think it's wonderful we are taking the time to listen to them."
James Doherty, 54, of Long Beach was arrested Friday in north Long Beach on suspicion stabbing Kaj Hansen, 79, also of Long Beach.
Doherty was in Long Beach Jail with bail set at $1.03 million. He was wanted on warrants for vandalism and driving with a suspended license, Long Beach police said.
Hansen disappeared around 4:30 p.m. Thursday after leaving to change Doherty's lock at a Long Beach apartment complex he owns. Doherty was being evicted, Hansen's wife told police.
When Hansen didn't return, his wife knocked on Doherty's door.
No one answered, but she noticed bloody drag marks outside the door, said Nancy Pratt, Long Beach Police spokesperson.
Two men flying model airplanes on their lunch break Friday found Hansen's body in a field along Sand Canyon Avenue, just off the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway in Irvine.
An autopsy found stabbing wounds and evidence of "blunt force trauma" to Hansen's body.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
By JOEL ZLOTNIK
‘MY BABY’: Vickey De Lacour on Wednesday recalls her son, Camp Pendleton Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner, who was killed in Iraq in a suicide bomb attack on Monday.
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO - A Marine Corps boot camp graduation photo. A picture with Sparky the Jack Russell terrier. A crucifix. Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner in his dress blues.
Ken Gardner created a tribute to his son on one wall of his home when the 20-year-old went to war. A proud father's celebration of achievement turned into a wall of mourning when Gardner died Monday with six other Marines after a bomb ripped through a U.S. convoy outside Fallujah, Iraq.
Ken Gardner and Derek's mom, Vickey De Lacour, sat in front of what's now a memorial and cried Wednesday afternoon, as they struggled with the realization they were talking about Derek in the past tense.
"He was my son, my little baby - they never grow up," De Lacour said.
Her baby didn't sleep through the night until he was 2 1/2, and she would drive him through Laguna Hills until he dozed off. "That's what moms go through, that's what moms do," she said. "Moms shouldn't outlive their children.
"As a mother you always want to protect your children and I wasn't there to. Why did he have to die?"
They remembered a boy with a big heart and strong will, whomade friends wherever he went and loved the scary rides at Knott's Berry Farm, pro wrestling and rap music. He had a mischievous side - at 4 years old talking his Kindercare cohorts into running away from his mom while on a field trip to Los Angeles Zoo. There was his entrepreneurial spirit that emerged about the same time - loading his books in a wagon and trying to sell them to neighbors, asking his mom if he could sell the rocking chair of his little brother Erik, now 14.
Derek Gardner for the past year had been living with his girlfriend, April Ornelas, at her parents' Mission Viejo home. This Friday would have been 18 months since Gardner walked into Sears at the Laguna Hills Mall and Ornelas spotted him with a Marines T-shirt and thought, "That guy's cute. He needs to come over and talk to me."
He did; and on Christmas Eve, Derek Gardner asked Ornelas if she would marry him when he returned from his deployment. "One of the things he said before he left was, 'This isn't goodbye sweetheart, this is hello to our new beginning,' " said Ornelas, 18.
The two talked briefly Sunday about 1 a.m. "Just remember that I love you," Ornelas said was the last thing Derek Gardner told her.
Derek Gardner was slated to come home in three weeks.
"He believed in the Marine Corps," De Lacour said. "I don't know if he believed in what he was doing over there, but he's a Marine. He's trained as a Marine, and Marines do what they're told. I know he couldn't wait to come home."
Derek Gardner, in the Class of 2000 at Laguna Hills High School, came from a family that has served in four wars. He began talking to his dad, a Vietnam veteran, about joining the Marines when he was a sophomore. The family is no stranger to the service. Derek's great-grandfather served in World War I, one of his grandfathers served in Korea, the other in World War II.
De Lacour doesn't think this war is worth the sacrifice. "What hurts is feeling like he did this for nothing."
Before he deployed Feb. 29, Derek Gardner gave his dad a photo called Reflections, depicting the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. It rests today above a photo of Ken Gardner's boot camp platoon.
"A lot of those names on the memorial are people I knew," his father said. "Every time I'd see it I cry, but now I've got a bigger reason to cry."
Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner
GRIEVING: Ken Gardner cries as her reads a sympathy card on the death of his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner.
California's electricity usage set another record Wednesday, the seventh since July 19. Demand peaked at 45,597 megawatts, breaking the record of 45,165 set Tuesday, according to the California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's power grid.
Temperatures are expected to moderate today, leading the ISO to forecast a lower peak demand of 44,127 megawatts.
However, the ISO is encouraging Californians to conserve electricity whenever possible, especially during the peak hours of 4 to 7 p.m.
Conservation during the peak period helps the ISO balance the supply and demand, keeping the grid stable.
– Andrew Galvin
By KARLIE REISS
The Orange County Register
TUSTIN – A member of the Foothill High girls' varsity volleyball team will be transferred to another campus and banned from playing school sports, and six fellow players wait to hear whether they too will be transferred after being caught with alcohol during a team tournament in Hawaii.
The seven – half of Foothill's varsity squad – were suspended from the first week of school for violating the Tustin Unified School District conduct code by possessing alcohol during a school function - the Seabury, Maui Classic in late August.
On Wednesday, each girl went through an hour-long disciplinary hearing before the Student Placement Review Committee, a panel of three administrators.
Three of the seven girls were projected starters, and all have been restricted from practicing with the team while on suspension.
"It's devastating," coach Scott Bruce said. "This was our year to battle for first place in the Sea View League."
The seven girls – a mix of juniors and seniors – were caught by some of the parents who traveled with the team to Hawaii, and the parents reported the incident to Bruce. Details were unclear about what they were caught doing because the girls told differing stories at the hearings, Bruce said.
Even the type of alcohol involved was not clearly determined in the hearings, Bruce said.
But administrators decided to transfer one girl because she had a previous conduct- code violation, Bruce said.
District administrators will sort through the information and make a decision on the other six girls today.
If the girls are transferred to Tustin High, the only other comprehensive school in the district with junior and senior classes, the California Interscholastic Federation prohibits them from participating in school athletics.
If they return to Foothill after a semester, the school will decide if they can play a spring sport, said Thom Simmons, a spokesman for the CIF-Southern Section.
Students and parents may challenge the committee's decision by appealing to the district director of Student Services, and further appeal to the school board if they are not satisfied with the director's response, said Mark Eliot, a spokesman for the school district.
The seven vacancies put Foothill's varsity volleyball team in a jam.
The Knights open their 2004 season with a 5:30 p.m. match against No. 4-ranked Edison High today.
Bruce called up three girls from junior varsity, but Foothill faces a tough preseason schedule against two top-5 teams in the county.
Foothill's team had 11 seniors, all of whom grew up playing club volleyball together and making their way through the Knights' program since their freshman year.
Now, some of those girls may miss their senior season.
SANTA ANA – Lori Fischer, who booby-trapped several children's playgrounds two years ago, is back in custody after sheriff's officials said they had information that she might be planning more sabotage.
Fischer, 24, left nails and razor blades rigged on and around play equipment beginning in April 2002. The attacks ended with her arrest June 4, 2002, and she was sentenced to probation despite the prosecutor's objections.
No one was injured.
A sheriff's deputy on patrol in Lake Forest on Thursday spotted her car and stopped her. A search found piles of nails in the truck.
Fischer was detained for psychiatric evaluation because of statements she made to the deputy, said Jim Amormino, a sheriff's spokesman.
She was released from the evaluation Tuesday and immediately taken into custody on a probation violation. She is being held without bail, awaiting her arraignment Friday.
"I agree with the district attorney's statement last year that anybody who would intentionally hurt children should not be free on the streets," Amormino said.
By JOHN McDONALD
Edward Ayau had one purpose in mind when he contacted an Orange County man who claimed to have a Hawaiian warrior's skull and was selling it on eBay.
"I asked him if he would kindly surrender the remains of somebody's child, somebody's parent, so that we could give it a ceremonial return," Ayau said.
Ayau, a Hawaiian lawyer, is active in a group that tries to persuade people to return ancient remains. He said he was shocked at the rebuff from Jerry David Hasson, 55.
"He said he wasn't going to do it - it was his property," said Ayau, 40. "He said he had every right to it and he was going to sell it."
Ayau reported Hasson to federal authorities. The Huntington Beach resident was charged Wednesday with violating laws that prohibit the removal or disturbance of American Indian and Native Hawaiian remains on federal land. Interstate trafficking in the remains also is a crime, no matter their origin.
Hasson, who could not be reached to comment, faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
The charge comes after a lengthy investigation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that began with a review of the eBay offer, headlined "200 Year Old Hawaiian Skull."
The skull was supposed to have come from the excavation of Whaler's Village, a tourist area under construction in 1969 on the island of Maui. Hasson contended in court papers that he was a 17-year-old lifeguard at the time and was working as a bit character in a Hollywood production, "The Hawaiians."
On the set, Hasson said, he met Frasier Heston, the son of the movie's star, Charlton Heston. Along with a third teen, he said, they sneaked onto the site, dug into the sand and found a human skeleton. It was surrounded by weapons characteristic of the 1790s battle of Kaanapali Beach, fought at the site.
Hasson said he took only the skull, according to the court papers.
The FBI interviewed Frasier Heston, who reported no recollection of Hasson but did recall finding bones. He denied taking any remains.
John Fryer, a special agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, posed as a buyer willing to pay $2,500 for the skull. Hasson, court papers say, had a plan to dodge the laws. He would give the skull to Fryer as a gift, and Fryer would buy a collector's edition comic book from him for $2,500.
The exchange was made.
An expert determined that the remains were not those of a warrior but of a 50-year-old woman who had died before the famous battle.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Quoc Binh "Bo" Tran explained it in March when he left for Iraq. He explained it last Tuesday on the telephone.
"Don't worry" might have been his last words to his mother. She keeps trying to replay the conversation in her mind. He always said, "Don't worry."
Tran, 26, a member of the National Guard's 181st Support Battalion, was killed Sunday in Baghdad when a bomb exploded near the military transport vehicle in which he was a passenger. Tuesday, Tran's body was being flown to the United States escorted by a soldier from his work detail.
Funeral details had not been set.
Tran was the oldest child of Van Tran, a former second lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, who said he was captured and placed in a "re-education camp" after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Van Tran remembered his son, as a small boy, carrying one sister on his shoulders and leading the other by the hand as the family escaped through the jungle of Vietnam.
From the time he was a little boy, Bo wanted to be a soldier.
"I'm proud of Bo," said Van Tran, an engineer in Irvine and a member of the Vietnamese Alliance Church in Midway City. "I'm proud he served his country."
When Bo got older, he wasn't into sports or school in particular. His hobby was cars. When they broke down, he loved to get under the hood.
His family laughed Tuesday when they recalled he wasn't that good at fixing them.
"He made them worse," his sister Kristie said.
In the National Guard, Bo was a weapons specialist. He didn't carry them; he repaired them. That's why he was always reassuring his family. He wasn't on the front lines carrying a gun.
Katie Tran, Quoc's 23-year- old sister, said she was at home alone Sunday when the doorbell rang. She thought the uniformed man at the door was an Army recruiter, so she didn't answer. More than an hour passed before he came again. The third time, she answered the door.
The uniformed man was a casualty assistance officer, and said he had news for her parents. They were both at church.
"Is it bad news?" she asked.
The man gulped. Then he asked again for her parents.
"The look on his face told me," she said.
Then Katie had to compose herself to tell her mother that Bo was dead. Thu Truong, Bo's mother, then called her husband on the cell phone.
"We were all in denial," said Kristie Tran. "We hoped it was a mistake."
Kristie cried Tuesday when she explained that she had promised to send her brother compact discs - the band Air and Christina Aguilera - but she never got around to it.
"That's my biggest regret," Kristie said. "I thought he was going to be home."
Truong said she mailed Bo a package last week. He said the rations he was eating weren't particularly good. She bought the most expensive dried Asian noodles she could find. She packaged them with dried shrimp and beef jerky.
His mother has no idea whether the package arrived.
Bo Tran wasn't a military rookie. He graduated from Mission Viejo HighSchool in 1994, went to Saddleback College for a year, and then enlisted in the National Guard. This was the end of his eighth year in the military.
For most of those years, war wasn't a concern.
"He liked to travel," Van Tran said. "He wanted to see the world."
Bo Tran liked to go shopping in exotic places and mail presents home to his mother. In September, she received a teapot.
They said that when he was home, Bo would insist on paying for meals for his family.
"He is the most generous person," Katie said.
The Trans speculated that he's so generous, he might have volunteered for the duty that took him outside the safety of the base in Iraq.
But they don't know for sure.
He was scheduled to come home in February.
That's when they expected to find out more details about his life overseas. Bo, a private person, had told his family that he wanted to meet a girl, buy a house and start a family.
Recently, he said he had found the woman he was going to marry. She lives in Italy.
The Trans have never met her. They didn't yet know her name.
Binh "Bo" Tran
HEARTACHE: Thu Truong's son, Quoc Binh Tran, a National Guard member, was killed Sunday in Iraq.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
I recently received a call that, as an acting commander of troops in Iraq, I did not want to take. The commanding general, Brig. Gen. Oscar B. Hilman, called to inform me that the 81st Brigade Combat Team soldier that was killed by an improvised explosive device was one of ours. My heart skipped a beat as the initial feelings of disbelief, shock and grief set in.
My heart sank as he said the name, because I vividly remembered this young man. Spc. Quoc Binh Tran, 26, from Mission Viejo was killed Sunday, Nov. 7, from injuries sustained from a vehicle-born explosive device that detonated near his convoy in Baghdad.
Spc. Tran was on a resupply mission for the 1-185th Armor Battalion, traveling from Baghdad to CSC Scania, about 90 miles south of Baghdad.
With the current operations in Fallujah, the roads are too dangerous to travel, so attending a memorial service at our brigade headquarters is out of the question. We will conduct our own service here at our forward operating base and we will do the ceremony on Veterans Day in honor of this fine soldier who paid the ultimate price to be called an American.
We are at war. Marines and soldiers are taking the streets of Fallujah as our beloved country celebrates this day for its veterans. The reality for my soldiers and their families on this Veterans Day is that not all of us are coming back home. The price of freedom is once again rising.
The theme of the Veterans Day message from Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi focused on a poignant question, "Have you thanked a veteran today?" Over 48 million of our fellow citizens have earned the distinguished title of "veteran." Thank them all.
Maj. John J. McBrearty
executive officer
1-185th Armor Battalion
81st BCT 40th Infantry Division
Central South Region, Iraq
On Veterans Day, it seems as though those who enlisted and were drafted during the Cold War are mostly forgotten. We went through training for combat and served in foreign countries at times of near conflict. We were on the front lines. There was no full-scale declared war, but we were ready.
Please include us in the celebration. We are proud to have served.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
By KEITH SHARON
His sisters showed their grief by wearing white "khan tang" mourning bands tied around their heads.
His father showed his grief by talking directly to his son, offering a tearful good-bye to Quoc Binh "Bo" Tran, a National Guardsman who was killed Nov. 7 in Iraq.
"To Bo ... you have fought the good fight," Van Tran said. "You have finished your race ... We know you had a life full of danger, but you never called back to complain ... You have honored the Vietnamese in this country."
More than 400 people, including about 30 members of the United States Armed Forces, attended funeral services for Bo Tran today at the Vietnamese Alliance Church. He was buried at the Riverside National Cemetery Saturday afternoon.
Tran was the 9th member of the California National Guard to be killed in "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
The service was conducted in English and Vietnamese.
Tran, 26, was killed when the car in which he was a passenger was hit by a bomb in Baghdad. He was a member of the 181st Armor Battalion.
Tran was posthumously promoted to the rank of sargeant today. His family was presented with the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, several gold pins, the California flag and a plaque from the City of Mission Viejo.
The large turnout was overwhelming to his family, who described Bo as a quiet and generous with his time and money. He constantly told them not to worry about his safety. In a phone call five days before he died, he reassured his mother that he was completely safe.
"This is more than we could have hoped for," said Kristie, Tran’s sister, who vowed – along with her sister Katie – to carry the khan tang mourning bands with them even after they are done wearing them.
Katie Tran said her brother’s death touched so many people in the community.
"This is a tribute to his life," Katie said. "He was so loving and showed caring for others. He lived an exemplary life. He served in the military because it was a selfless act. He stood for something."
Tran’s military service was honored by Major General Thomas Eres, who said Tran "possessed what we call the warrior ethic."
"Simply put, he is an American soldier," Eres said. "He joins a very special band of brothers. They will never be forgotten."
Brigadier General John Gong called Tran "our war hero" and "a proud soldier, truly full of patriotism."
Gong said he had endured several sleepless nights trying to prepare his remarks for Saturday’s service. He included himself among the people with "mixed emotions" over the war. But he said the cause in Iraq is just.
"You have every right to be proud of you Bo," Gong said. "He is the epitome of the greatest American. We owe him an eternal debt of gratitude."
Gong promised that the California National Guard would remain "fully engaged" despite its losses.
The large crowd appeared to hold its emotion in check until Van Tran stood at the podium.
Van Tran thanked everyone for coming and then he told them his remarks were going to be made to his son.
He talked to the flag-draped coffin as if his son was sitting in front of him. He asked Bo about the girl he had met in Italy.
"Where is your girlfriend?" Van Tran said. "We have never met."
Van Tran wondered aloud why has son had died before he did.
He told Bo that the "sky fell" when the Army representative showed up at the family doorstep to give them the news that he had died.
"I am so proud of you," Tran said.
MOURNING: Kristie Tran holds a photo of her late brother, National Guardsman Quoc Binh “Bo” Tran, as his funeral procession leaves the Vietnamese Alliance Church in Midway City on Saturday. Bo Tran was killed in Iraq on Nov. 7.
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