Inseparable Friends Torn Apart by Death : Tragedy: Rocky Costello, a popular athlete from La Mirada, died four days after a fiery traffic crash. His close friend and business partner was badly burned in the crash.

From beneath long, sun-bleached hair, Rocky Costello stares at the camera with the other black-jerseyed football players from Neff High School in La Mirada. He is in the third row in this 1979 yearbook photo and, naturally, stands beside Craig Gauthier.

They had been inseparable since Little League, and would be for 10 more years, up to the moment a month ago when Costello died. They were in the same hospital room, both terribly burned from a highway crash.

Gauthier is enduring the pain of burns on 60% of his body. The loss of his best friend, one of the most popular athletes La Mirada has ever known, hurts worse.

Costello and Gauthier, both 28, had recently started a masonry business and were driving home from a job on Dec. 15 when, just after 5 p.m. their pickup truck was struck head-on by a car and burst into flames on Imperial Highway in Brea.

Four days later, Costello, who was burned over 85% of his body, died at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.

Costello, a kicker, was the most valuable player at Fresno State in 1983 and was still intent on playing in the National Football League.

He was admired for his kicking and for the way he played golf and surfed. He was cherished for the way he touched lives.

“He was like a perfect wave crashing on the beach,” said Scott Betty, 26, also a longtime friend of Costello. “He made people around him feel good. I never heard him say a negative comment about anybody. Since we were 9, he never raised his voice at me. The only bad moment he brought to anyone was the day he passed away.”

The funeral, attended by 450 people who crowded into the 200-seat Chapel of Memories in Norwalk, went on for almost two emotional hours. Its heavy tension was eased when Kevin Gauthier, Craig’s brother, stood and said that there was going to be a big football game in heaven and God, needing a kicker, said, “Let’s draft Rock.”

Craig Gauthier lay in the subdued light of the UC Irvine Medical Center burn unit last week. His face, under a growth of whiskers, had healed. An arm, though, was heavily bandaged. A leg looked raw.

Each time he shifted his body, he grimaced.

“The thing I thank God for is that Rocky doesn’t have to go through this pain,” he said. “I know he would never want to live like this. It’s been almost a month of pure hell.”

The crash is never off his mind.

“I get angry, I know she may never have made a mistake before,” he said, referring to the driver of the car, Janet Askew, 29, of Costa Mesa. “But my best friend was taken. I think she should pay for her mistakes.”

Askew, who was treated at a hospital and released, has been charged with manslaughter. She will be arraigned today in North Orange County Municipal Court in Fullerton. Tom Decker, a traffic officer with the Brea Police Department, said her speed was estimated at 90 m.p.h. He said her car first struck a median on the heavily traveled road. He said he did not know why she was going so fast, but that drugs or alcohol were not involved.

“We were going west on Imperial, she was going east,” Gauthier said. “Rocky was driving. The sun was just going down. She came right toward us. She hit us so hard. The fire happened so quick. The cabin lit up in flames. I couldn’t get the window open because the right side was caved in.

“The flames grew more intense. I was going to give up but I had one more burst of energy and opened the window eight inches. Somebody pulled me through. I was all lit on fire. My skin was melting off me. I was yelling bloody murder, yelling for someone to get Rocky out of the truck. Then I saw someone grab him. He was really on fire.”

It was hard for Gauthier to talk about Costello. When he did, it was through tears. “The guy was the greatest athlete who ever lived,” he said.

A week before the accident, Costello had shot a 66 to win a tournament at the La Mirada Golf Course.

“Rocky was the perfect golfer,” Gauthier said. “Nobody could hit it farther than him. And he was just learning.”

They played almost every day: basketball, golf, tennis, table tennis.

“He beat me pretty much, but it was all in fun,” Gauthier said. “We never got mad at each other. When he beat me he’d tell me to try harder. He was a complete motivator.”

Gauthier, who was an All-Suburban League defensive back at Neff, recalled how he and Costello would arrive for summer football practice sunburned from surfing, to the displeasure of the Neff coaches.

“I surfed with him all my life,” he said. “I thank God we surfed the day before the accident. Down at Huntington. It was perfect. It might have been the best day we surfed in 10 years.”

Costello died about 5:30 a.m. Dec. 19.

“I could hear everybody rush in (the room),” Gauthier said. “They pulled the curtain around his bed.”

The attempts to resuscitate Costello were unsuccessful. Dr. Bruce Achauer said the damage to his lungs was too extensive.

“I listened to the whole thing,” Gauthier said. “I listened to 21 years of a beautiful friendship go away.”

Costello was a quarterback and kicker for five years on the La Mirada Lords, a Pop Warner team that won 83 consecutive games. As a Little Leaguer, he pitched a perfect game and once hit a home run against Gauthier to win a 1-0 game.

His older brother, Rick Costello, was a gifted football player at Neff and later at the University of Wyoming.

“Rick was great, but the little guy just kept coming, just kept working,” said Bob Costello, the boys’ father. “(Rocky) never missed an extra point. All through Pop Warner, Neff, Cerritos and Fresno.”

Although he eventually grew to just under 6 feet and 165 pounds, Costello was too small to play quarterback in high school. As a sophomore, he was 5-foot-2 and barely 100 pounds, so his father sent him to a ranch to learn to be a jockey. But the trainer, noting that the young man’s feet were too big for that profession, sent him home.

At Neff, which was closed in 1981 because of declining enrollment, Costello kicked the Trojans into the CIF playoffs. He made a 49-yard field goal his senior year.

After two years at Cerritos College, Costello made Fresno State’s team. In his MVP season, he scored 80 points and became a hero on a rainy afternoon in Long Beach. With Fresno trailing Cal State Long Beach, 3-0, Costello lined up for a field goal attempt with five minutes left in the game. But the snap from the center was bad.

“The ball rolled back in a sea of mud,” Fresno Coach Jim Sweeney recalled. “The holder (lateraled) the ball to Rocky and Rocky scrambled to his right and threw a 37-yard touchdown pass to a guy who had never caught a pass.” Fresno won, 7-3.

“He was a generous kid,” Sweeney said. “He would play quarterback or receiver in practice if we needed him to. He was the world’s greatest volunteer.”

Costello had NFL tryouts with San Diego, Denver and Washington but was never signed. Rolf Benirschke of the Chargers and Rich Karlis of the Broncos, who were both at the peak of their careers, beat him out.

“He was a step away from making it in pro football,” Sweeney said.

Costello, who had been running almost 10 miles a day, had planned to try again this year.

The memories rush back for Costello’s many friends--how he was always with a pretty girl, how he would continually change a car’s radio dial, how he always worried about his nose.

“We called him Schnoz,” said Mike Janosz, 31. “I remember him looking in the mirror once and saying, ‘God, my nose.’ ”

Costello’s smile was an even more prominent feature.

“He was like a preacher,” his father said. “He always had time to talk to people. When you had a problem, Rocky would listen. He was a real good kid. He didn’t cuss. Oh, he had a beer now and then.”

Costello, who lived with his parents in La Mirada, sold cars for a time in Huntington Beach, but his father said Rocky was not cut out for it.

“He thought he was cheating people,” said Bob Costello, who has a used car business in Bellflower. “I don’t know how he made any money.”

Rudy Alkire, 62, of Hemet, was one of the many people who spoke at the funeral.

“I’d known Rocky since he was a kid,” Alkire said over the telephone this week. “When he got out of Cerritos in ’81 he was working at a gas station. I was upset that he wasn’t pursuing his college education. I had just had heart surgery and I had to have exercise. I told him to bring his bag of balls and we’d go up to the La Mirada High School field. He’d kick and I’d go get the balls and bring them back. Then we’d sit in the middle of the field and have terrific talks.

“He called me one day and said, ‘Mr. Alkire, I think I’m going to Fresno.’ I said, ‘Get in your car and hit the road.’

“He was always asking me, ‘Mr. Alkire, how do you feel?’ He was like my kid . . .”

Alkire began to cry.

Gauthier has returned to his home in Whittier.

“They tell me I’m going to heal real good,” he said. “I’m going to have to wear a special wet suit 24 hours a day for the next year to keep my skin smooth and flat. And absolutely no sun.”

Bent over, he struggles to rehabilitate himself. He walks 20 times up and down his driveway two or three times a day.

Last Friday afternoon he watched golf on TV as his fiancee, Pamela Lynas, whom he plans to marry in May, held his hand.

It won’t be too long, he hopes, before he will be playing again.

But without his best friend, he said, it will never be the same.

BURN TRUST FUND

A trust fund to help pay medical expenses of Rocky Costello and Craig Gauthier has been set up through the Orange County Burn Assn., said Julie Byerley, a longtime friend of the men. Neither man had health insurance. She said checks, payable to the Costello/Gauthier Trust, may be sent to the burn association at 1985 S. State College Blvd., Anaheim 92806.