Loved Flying : Death Ended Rider’s First Copter Trip

The last time Becky Pollard of Tustin saw her pilot husband, he was excited, she said.

Later that night--Tuesday night--he was going on his first helicopter ride. You have to understand his passion for flight to realize what that meant to him, she said.

“He’s had this dream since he was very little,” she said. “It’s all he’s ever wanted to do--to be a pilot.”

Jeffrey A. Pollard, 27, born and raised in Burbank as a devout Mormon, charted his course in his teens, his mother said. He graduated from high school, spent his two-year “Mormon mission” working for the church in North Carolina, returned home, married and set out to become an airline pilot.

Through the five years of his marriage, he channeled his money into pilot training, his wife said.

He studied airline maintenance, then worked in Texas and Oklahoma as an airline mechanic while studying in flight schools after hours. Last July, he finally qualified as a flight instructor and returned to Southern California for work. He got it at John Wayne Airport, teaching people to be private airplane pilots.

Then, Becky Pollard said, he got an opportunity to ride in the Costa Mesa Police Department helicopter during one of its patrol shifts. Having a civilian observer on board is not uncommon, a police spokesman said.

“He had never been on a helicopter before,” she said. “He was very excited. He went along as an observer. A friend of his arranged it. He was just going for the ride.

“He was supposed to go a week ago, but something came up and he didn’t go,” she said. His flight was postponed until Tuesday.

When she saw him at home that final night, he was eager to finish the day’s teaching assignments so he could take the helicopter ride, she said.

He left for the airport to conduct his night ground-school class, “and he just never came home after that,” she said.

Pollard was aboard the Costa Mesa police helicopter when it was called into action to pursue a suspected car thief who had been sighted in Santa Ana.

It must have seemed a lucky break for someone wanting to see police pilots in action. “I’m sure he was having a good time up there,” Becky Pollard said.

But during the pursuit, the helicopter collided with another from the Newport Beach Police Department and crashed in flames. The Newport officers survived, but all three aboard the Costa Mesa helicopter died. Pollard’s was the third body in the wreckage, for which police at first could not account.

The news came to the Pollard household much later Tuesday night, delivered by Jeffrey Pollard’s boss from Lenair Aerobatics, Becky Pollard said. Queried by police, the boss had waited and waited “until he talked to the person who saw Jeff get on board the helicopter,” she said.

Funeral services have been scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Tustin. Burial will be at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. A trust fund for Pollard’s 21-month-old daughter, Christy, has been established, Becky Pollard said.

“I never really asked him what he felt while he was up there flying,” said his mother, Pat Pollard. “I just know he had a love for it. It was something he wanted to do. . . . It’s been with him since he was very small. Airplanes have just been his life.”

She said that in Pollard’s orderly march toward his goal, he had figured he would be a commuter airline pilot by September. Apparently, he was right, she said.

On Thursday, a family friend called asking to be put in touch with her son, Pat Pollard said. “He had a good friend who worked for McDonnell Douglas who needed a co-pilot, and he was sure he could get him the job” flying the firm’s private transport planes, she said.

“It would have been a big break for him.”