Retired Journalist, 75, Dies in Apparent Suicide Pact : Death: Officers find Robert Kirkpatrick dead after wife phones for help. She is hospitalized.

A 75-year-old man died Friday of a drug overdose, and his wife was hospitalized, after the two apparently made a pact to die together, police said.

Police withheld identification, but county records and neighbors identified the couple as Robert J. and Tosca E. Kirkpatrick.

According to police, a woman called from an apartment about 10 a.m. to report an attempted double suicide. When officers reached the home in the 2100 block of North Ponderosa Street, a woman walked out to meet them, police spokeswoman Maureen Haacker said.

Police found her husband’s body on the living room floor.

“We’re assuming that they did plan this (as) a double suicide and had worked together . . . and took a combination of pills and self-injection, which possibly was Demerol,” she said.

It was not immediately known what kind of pills the couple took, Haacker said. Tosca Kirkpatrick was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana and remained there for observation.

Neighbors said both Kirkpatricks had cancer surgery in recent years. The husband was scheduled to have another operation Friday, a neighbor said.

“He was simply tired of surgeries, and said he didn’t want to go on anymore,” the neighbor said.

Robert Kirkpatrick retired as a copy editor from the Orange County Register in 1988, where he had worked for more than 20 years.

“He was a tremendously respected fellow,” said County Clerk Gary Granville, who once worked with Kirkpatrick at the paper. “He was a throwback to an era when the word gentleman meant gentleman.”

C.P. Smith, an assigning editor at the newspaper, added that Kirkpatrick was a “prototypal journalist from another era, someone who (worked) with hot type and wire machines, the type that the newsroom just doesn’t seem to have anymore.”

Although most of those who knew him were aware that Robert Kirkpatrick had been ill in recent years, they said they are still surprised to hear how he died.

Counselors who work closely with the elderly said, however, that those with terminal illnesses often want to end their life.

“Health and old age is a very trying situation and could lead to something like this,” said Judy Reynolds, associate director at the Orange Senior Citizens Community Center. “If you’re growing older and you have good health, it’s one thing. But it’s much more difficult for an individual or a couple and the family involved, if the senior is ill.”

Muriel Nelson, who works with the county Feed Back Foundation, a nonprofit organization that feeds and counsels seniors, said: “For many ill seniors, it just gets to a point where it’s too much trouble living. After a while, nothing good is going to happen, and they just want out.”

Times staff writer Bob Elston contributed to this story.