Man Trying to Break Poverty Chain Is Killed

A 47-year-old service station attendant who had been working two jobs and collecting aluminum cans to support his family was bludgeoned and stabbed to death early Monday in an apparent robbery.

Police said they found Harold T. Doorenbos’ badly beaten body at the Shell service station at 1200 S. State College Blvd. The station’s floor safe was open.

Authorities said it was not known how much money was taken from the safe, but family members, who live in a motel, said Doorenbos’ killer didn’t even bother to take the few dollars that the attendant had in his pocket.

“Oh, my God!” the victim’s wife, Dawn Doorenbos, called out as she watched a midday television news report of the incident from the family’s tiny room at the Valencia Inn in Anaheim. “I want to see these people behind bars, if I don’t get to them first. It’s not right to take a human life for a measley hundred dollars.”

Police said they have few leads in the case, adding that a customer who had arrived after the murder probably called for help. Investigators also said that they have few details on how the body was discovered.

Sgt. Chet Barry said Doorenbos’ body was found about 3:45 a.m. Monday in the glass cashier’s booth. He said it was not known Monday night how many times Doorenbos had been struck and stabbed.

According to police, information from the coroner’s office and customers who were at the station before the attendant’s death indicate that Doorenbos might have been killed within two hours of the discovery of the body.

“This is kinda’ out of the blue,” Barry said of the crime.

Harold Doorenbos Jr., 21, who went to the scene Monday morning to identify the body, said his father had worked the graveyard shift for Shell for about five years and that he had recently taken a second job as an attendant at a nearby Mobil station.

On Sunday night, the family said, the elder Doorenbos had ridden his motor scooter straight from his job at the Mobil station to begin his midnight shift at Shell.

“I can’t understand why something like this could happen,” his wife said. “He hadn’t done anything to nobody. Why not just gag him and tie him up? Why do they have to kill a person?”

Because of financial troubles that caused them to give up a townhouse more than five years ago, his wife said that the family--including five children--had found lodging at the Valencia. The couple’s two youngest children, ages 11 and 12, still live there.

By Monday afternoon, all the children had returned to the cramped room to comfort their mother and wait for more news from investigators. Lounging quietly on a large bed next to the window or on a couch along one wall, they jumped to their feet each time the incident was reported on television.

Since moving to the Valencia on Anaheim’s west side, the wife said that she and her husband of 26 years had been putting aside extra money in an attempt to give their children a better home.

But, she said, recent medical problems plaguing the children have depleted the the family’s savings. Her husband recently had to borrow money to pay for medicine, she added.

“We’ve been scrimping and scraping, and do the best we can,” she said, her head resting on the railing outside the second-floor room. “We collect cans during the week to get money to buy bread and milk; even look for hot dogs when they are on sale.”

At one point inside the motel room, the victim’s wife asked her children to recall special moments in their relationship with their father.

“A very sweet guy,” said Dawn Marie Kingery, the 24-year-old daughter. “Everybody loved my dad.”

The wife said her husband enjoyed his work and knew most of his regular customers by their first names.

“They (customers) noticed when he went on vacation,” she said. “They always asked him how he was when he got back. He was always there for people. And he never turned anybody down who needed help.”