Mass for Slain GI Is Prayer for Peace at Home : Crime: Army private survived Desert Storm combat only to die, along with his cousin, as innocent victims of street wars.

It was a scene repeated scores of times in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War--members of the armed forces standing at solemn attention beside a flag-draped coffin as a rifle squad fired three volleys and a solitary bugler played “Taps.”

But at the sun-drenched cemetery in Glendora on Tuesday, there was a difference.

The man that the soldiers had come to honor--19-year-old Army Pvt. Cesar Gardea--had survived combat during Operation Desert Storm only to fall in the street wars that rage through Southern California.

This time there was another coffin, too. Bedecked with flowers, it contained the body of Gardea’s cousin, 17-year-old Pablo Paez, a civilian who died with Gardea in Baldwin Park last week when the two were cut down by gunfire from a passing car.

Two neighbors standing with them suffered minor gunshot wounds during the nighttime attack in the front yard of Paez’s house. Police have made no arrests, but they say that a teen-age gang member is being sought.

Although officers say that none of the victims belonged to a gang, Paez’s family said he liked to dress like a gang member.

There has been speculation in the neighborhood that the killer is from a gang that is the rival of a Baldwin Park gang.

At the Tuesday morning funeral Mass for the two young victims at St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Baldwin Park, Father James Forsen--speaking alternately in Spanish and English--urged the more than 300 mourners to bring the violence to an end.

“Too many people, when they think of these deaths, say, ‘What a waste, they were too young. . .’ ” Forsen said. “That is the worst thing they could think. We should not value someone’s life by how long it was, but how they lived it. . . . If they produced love, their lives were valuable.

“But if their deaths cause more violence, more death, then that is a waste,” the priest said. “Do we want anyone else to suffer the way we have suffered?”

After the Mass, the coffins were carried down the aisle to a pair of hearses parked in front of the church. Gardea’s pallbearers were six soldiers in dress green uniforms. Paez’s pallbearers were six civilians in black pants and dress shirts.

The funeral cortege traveled the 10 miles to Oakdale Cemetery, which donated the arrangements and the side-by-side graves.

After a brief graveside ceremony, the soldiers folded the flag that had lain on Gardea’s coffin and presented it to his weeping mother, Amparo Ruiz of Reno, Nev.

Others attending the funeral included Paez’s mother, Amelia; father, Jose; brother, Jose Jr., and sister, Rose.

Not far away, unobtrusive but visible, Glendora police officers watched to make sure that no further gang violence marred the ceremonies.

“Let us hope that these deaths produce something wonderful in the world, turning anger, sadness and the search for vengeance into love and understanding,” Forsen said. “Don’t we all want that?”