Whittier, UCLA Communities Shattered by Student’s Death in Motorcycle Crash

Chris Zambrano was the kid no one ever worried about. Life seemed to come easily for this popular, intelligent and motivated UCLA sophomore. The computer-science engineering major always seemed to know just where he was going.

Then Zambrano, 20, crashed while riding a motorcycle in the Sepulveda Pass during the dark hours before dawn on April 12. The accident left him brain-dead. Four days after the accident, life-support machines were turned off at UCLA Medical Center.

Zambrano’s passing has wounded the communities in Whittier, where Zambrano was from, and at the university to a degree that belies the frequency with which such tragedies occur.

Eight hundred people crammed into the St. Louis of France Church in La Puente for the Rosary. Another 600 put aside work and school obligations to attend the funeral.

“You expect him to walk through the door,” said Ted Allen, a roommate. “There’s an emptiness every time I look at his picture and see him smiling.”

“That was his trademark,” said Margaret Alexander, a family friend. “At the hospital I kept hoping I’d see his smile again.” Twenty-four hours into the family’s four-day bedside vigil, Zambrano’s brain activity ceased.

“For 20 years, he’s been known for his head, his intelligence,” said Natalie Zambrano, Chris’ mother, who buried her son days after her 29th wedding anniversary. “It was hard to accept his death due to that type of injury.”

Former teachers feel much the same way. Zambrano “could communicate more with less words than any student I ever taught,” said Bob Braden, a Pioneer High School teacher who has taught for 41 years.

Zambrano graduated fifth in a class of 354 at Pioneer High School in 1988--with a shelf full of awards and certificates--after completing “our most challenging curriculum,” said Larry Kampa, a counselor at the school. “He rarely came in for counseling. He knew where he was going.”

So much so that the sports enthusiast left the junior varsity baseball team after his sophomore year, even though he was entranced by anything to do with baseball. He wanted more time to study.

Zambrano boxed his baseball cards neatly, ordered chronologically and alphabetically, and stacked them in a cabinet at his parents’ North Whittier home. His newer files, just as meticulously organized, are labeled with headings such as “Hughes,” the company that offered him a summer job in computer engineering the week he died. Zambrano never saw the letter.

“If I could pick 100 people I know that this could happen to,” said Alex Martinez, another roommate, “Chris wouldn’t be on my list.”

Zambrano borrowed Martinez’s Honda Interceptor at 2 a.m. that Thursday morning. The two had been party-hopping on UCLA’s fraternity row. Zambrano had been drinking that night, but not for some time before the accident, his friends say.

The warm evening’s ride seemed a perfect way to cool down from two hours of dancing. Zambrano planned to return for Martinez within half an hour.

“Chris told me that he wanted to buy a motorcycle, and I forbade it,” Natalie Zambrano said. “I said, ‘Never.’ But over the years he always chose what he wanted to do.”

Zambrano apparently could handle the independence. “There’s nothing that I know of that he tried to do, that he didn’t do,” Martinez said. “He’d do twice as much as me in half the time. He would do everything and get away with it. He would say, ‘I just took that bull by the horns and wrestled him to the ground.’ ”

“When you’re young,” Allen said, “you don’t really feel like you’re going to die.”

So no one challenged Zambrano over not wearing a helmet. No one thought to worry over an exhausted Zambrano riding out alone after a party on a dark mountain road.

Less than 10 minutes from campus, Zambrano, traveling north through Sepulveda Pass, began climbing a hill on an unlit stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard.

The road curved darkly to the left, but Zambrano failed to make the turn. His bike crashed through the metal fence at a 45-degree angle. The impact bent back three metal supports and ripped through the chain mesh, about two-tenths of a mile below North Bel Air Crest Road.

Zambrano, who suffered severe head injuries, lay undiscovered in the dark for two hours. The first eight minutes are critical to a patient with Chris’ injuries, the neurosurgeon would later tell Natalie Zambrano.

Early the next morning, Zambrano’s worried roommates called UCLA Medical Center. No, a Zambrano had not checked in. But yes, there was a John Doe from a motorcycle accident, and yes, he had red hair.

If Zambrano had not hurt his head, or perhaps if he had worn a helmet, he would be recovering now from nothing more than a broken leg.

At least 40 people other than his immediate family waited at the hospital for word on Zambrano’s condition. Hundreds would later mourn with family and friends. It was a reunion of sorts for those Zambrano had touched.

At the burial site, after most had dispersed, one group of comrades became animated, exhilarated at being together, almost as if Zambrano were still among them.

“C’mon you guys,” one said soberly, “this isn’t high school graduation; this is a funeral.”

They walked across the grass to their cars with their heads down.