PLACENTIA : Service for Graduate of El Dorado Is Set

A memorial service is scheduled tonight for Tempe Graves, the 18-year-old former president of El Dorado High School’s student body who was killed in a Northern California car accident last week.

Graves, who was student president and captain of El Dorado’s girls’ tennis team last year, was killed Dec. 26 in a single car accident on Interstate 5 near Los Banos while driving to Oakland with her boyfriend to attend a concert. The memorial service is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Placentia Presbyterian Church, 849 N. Bradford Ave.

“She just cared for people and she showed it in all kinds of different ways,” said her father, Donald Graves. “She helped people get off drugs. She helped feed the homeless down at Featherly (Regional) Park. She is a great leader.”

Graves was honored last year by the Placentia Unified School District Board of Education as one of El Dorado’s top students and, during the city’s student government day, was named honorary mayor by the City Council. Since graduating in June, she attended UCLA.

According to the California Highway Patrol, Graves was driving northbound on Interstate 5 shortly after 11 a.m. on Dec. 26 when she apparently fell asleep and plowed into the back of a parked flatbed truck. She died soon afterward.

Her boyfriend, Jeff Bakken, 19, was asleep in the car and suffered a broken leg and facial injuries and has been released from the hospital.

In addition to her father, Graves is survived by her mother, Margot, and a 14-year-old sister, Tegan.

A scholarship is being established at El Dorado High School in her memory.