Victim Was Always Ready to Lend a Hand : Slaying: Family recalls good deeds of David Scott Baker, who was killed by man who led police on 300-mile chase.

As a kid, he took in stray animals. As an adult, he opened his home to friends when they were in trouble.

So David Scott Baker was not one to hesitate when he saw the plastic “HELP” sign dangling from the back of a 13-year-old Toyota Corona stalled along a lonely stretch of Interstate 5 outside of Los Banos on Friday.

Baker stopped and tried without success to help jump-start the disabled sedan. When Baker disconnected his jumper cables, the sedan’s driver shot him twice in the chest with a shotgun. Then he fled in Baker’s 1988 Nissan.

The shooting prompted a 300-mile chase that ended more than four hours later in Westminster when California Highway Patrol officers killed Baker’s assailant as hovering news helicopters beamed the scene to a television audience.

Darren Michael Stroh, 22, died as he raised his sawed-off, 12-gauge shotgun at officers, authorities said.

Baker, 26, of Castle Rock, Wash., was one who always raised a helping hand, his friends and relatives said Saturday.

“As far back as I can remember, he was always bringing home stray dogs and cats,” said his brother, Bruce Baker, a law student who lives in Glendora. “After he was married, he kept bringing people home who needed help.

“If this guy had asked my brother to stay, or even give him his car, he would have. He would have probably given him a ride to Fresno. Instead, he got shot.”

Baker was headed toward Los Angeles to visit his brother when he turned good Samaritan for the last time. He planned the trip because his brother is recovering from knee surgery and had been unable to attend a family reunion during the Christmas holidays.

Baker had tipped off other family members about his secret trip. But he planned to knock on his brother’s door Friday and surprise him by casually announcing: “I just thought I’d drop in for supper.”

Instead, Bruce Baker spent the dinner hour Friday night watching the dramatic death of his brother’s killer as the chilling videotape was shown on the evening news.

“I was very relieved . . . that I wouldn’t have to worry about the legal system seeking justice,” Baker said Saturday. “My wife’s family had someone killed and now they have to go through the agony of a trial. I guess I was somewhat appeased that justice had been done.”

Meanwhile, the investigation into Friday’s tragedy continued in Merced and Orange counties.

John Fesse, deputy coroner of Merced County, said an autopsy showed that Baker died instantly from two shotgun blasts fired at close range.

Forensics specialists at an Orange County Sheriff’s Department garage in Santa Ana photographed and fingerprinted the red Volkswagen Cabriolet in which Stroh was shot to death.

The lower half of the vehicle’s driver seat had a bullet hole in it, and was soaked with blood. There was at least one bullet hole in the passenger side of its frame and another in the canvas roof of the car. The driver’s side window was shattered, as was its rear window. Shopping bags and a pink pillow rested in the back seat and the hatchback.

Investigators said Stroh commandeered the Volkswagen after crashing Baker’s car near Coalinga, in Fresno County.

The chaotic end to the pursuit was a far cry from the happy start of Baker’s trip.

According to his family, Baker had been in an upbeat mood when he left Thursday for Los Angeles from the hamlet of Castle Rock. The town--population 2,049--lies about 45 miles west of the Mt. St. Helens volcano.

To ease his parents’ concerns about him driving alone over icy roads in Oregon and Northern California, he had promised to phone his mother along the way.

At their Longview, Wash., home Carol and Harold Baker recalled Saturday that Scott had checked in from Medford, Ore., late Thursday. They were expecting their next call from him Friday morning from California.

“Scott was just a boy who couldn’t drive by without stopping,” Carol Baker said sadly. “He’d always give out a helping hand. Last year, he took in a friend who was having marital problems. He didn’t have much, but he was very giving with what he had.”

Born in Concord, Calif., Scott Baker had moved with his parents, his brother and his sister, Karen, to Washington state in 1975. In recent years, he worked as a boat builder.

Baker married his wife, Heidi, 2 1/2 years ago. He was the father of a 7-year-old daughter, Carena, by a previous marriage, and of a stepson, Dustin Kramer, 8.

Heidi Baker was at work as assistant manager of a Kelso, Wash., McDonald’s restaurant when she learned of her husband’s murder from Castle Rock police.

“He was a wonderful man,” she told reporters. “He would give someone the shirt off his back. He was always helping people.”

Her father, Hal Buck of Kelso, said: “Only a man who has daughters would understand this. But Scott was the boy you’d always hope your daughters would get.”

At the home in Castle Rock that Baker shared with his wife and children, his voice could still be heard Saturday on the family telephone answering machine.

“Ho, Ho, Ho! You’ve reached the Baker residence. . . . Happy Holidays! Ho, Ho, Ho!” the message said jovially.

Members of the family said they hoped Scott’s death would not send the wrong message to other would-be good Samaritans.

“The bad news is this will turn people off from doing what we all ought to be doing,” said his father, Longview paper mill worker Harold Baker.

“I know Scott wouldn’t want evil to prevail, where everybody hides in their homes,” said Bruce Baker. “He wouldn’t want it to be that the only people stopping when people need help on the side of the road are those who will hurt you.”

Times staff writer Bob Pool reported from Los Angeles and correspondent Stuart Wasserman from Castle Rock, Wash.