Classmates Keep Slain Student’s Name Alive With Award

When the names of the eighth-grade students at Hewes Intermediate School in North Tustin are called during graduation ceremonies this evening, one will be missing.

But students have made sure that the name of their former classmate, Greg Anderson, is not forgotten.

Greg had almost completed the seventh grade when he was stabbed to death by an intruder one afternoon last June, just after riding his bike home from school.

Students at Hewes wanted some kind of memorial to the 12-year-old. Earlier this year, they agreed on the idea of creating an annual award to be presented to the outstanding writer in the seventh grade.

“Greg was a good writer,” Hewes principal Julie Hume said. “There was a quality to the way he expressed himself for someone so young. We have memorial benches, trees, gardens for other students who left us, but this was the thing they seemed to want to do for Greg.”

The memorial award will be presented for the first time Monday during the Hewes’ annual award ceremonies, at which the school’s top students in various subjects are honored.

This year, two students will receive the Greg Anderson writing award: seventh-grader Jane Park and eighth-grader Lisa Blaydes. The award is going to an eighth-grader this year because that would have been Greg’s class, Hume said.

Each student will receive an engraved medal, and their names will go on a plaque kept in the school library. The students raised the money for the award themselves by putting change in a pickle jar at the school’s supply shop.

Greg’s father, Andy Anderson, said he was moved by the students’ thoughtfulness, especially because Greg had gone to school with them for just a year. The Andersons moved to East Tustin the September before Greg was killed.

“It just meant so much to us as a family,” Anderson said. “It came from the kids, and I think it’s a marvelous token.”

Greg’s stepmother, Carol Anderson, may attend the awards ceremony this year, but Andy Anderson said he will probably not go.

“I thought maybe I could,” he said, “but I didn’t feel like I personally could go without having some problems. I didn’t want the kids to be upset.”

Investigators have interviewed hundreds of people but have made no arrests in Greg’s slaying, which occurred on a sunny Thursday afternoon a little more than a year ago.

Greg usually rode his motocross bike home from school about 2:30 p.m., his stepmother told police. She was normally at home when he arrived, but on the day that Greg was killed she had left the house shortly after 2 p.m.

Greg’s sister, now 16, arrived home about 3 p.m. and found him lying face down in a pool of blood. A knife was found near his body.

Anderson said he still hopes that investigators will solve the crime.

“I don’t have any thoughts that they’ve shoved it on the back burner or something,” he said, his voice filling with sadness. “It’s just one of those situations. . . . I haven’t asked about what evidence they have, what they don’t have. It’s too painful for me to even get into that part of it.”

Greg’s father cheered up a bit, though, at the thought of today’s award ceremony. “It restores my faith in our young kids when they come up with something like this,” he said.