Pipes Play Last Time for Victim of Slaying

A smile.

Tender and bittersweet, it came during the funeral of Mick Champion, the Hillcrest man shot to death during an escape by a prisoner.

It lasted a moment. It belonged to his mother.

Through a minister’s eulogy Friday, Champion’s mother, Deatra Isham, reminisced over a whimsical scene from her son’s childhood.

Mick was just 4 and in need of his mother’s help to get dressed. While she struggled to slip a shoe over his unwilling foot, Mick told her: “Today, I play the bagpipes.”

Over the years, Champion, whose given name is Michael, grew to love the beautiful cacophony of the pipes, the Rev. Thomas Windsor said. He came to share his appreciation for Celtic music with his wife of four years, Pamela Champion. Together they traced family genealogies, took up Scottish and Irish folk dance, and dabbled in Celtic folk art.

In his memory relatives decorated a mantle at the El Camino Mortuary, placing a photograph portrait of Champion, his kilt, a traditional saber, and a folded American flag.

By turns, Pamela Champion wept during the service, then consoled those who passed by her pew.

And so it was on Friday, the piercing harmonies of the bagpipes that brought tears streaming down faces that moments before beamed in the memory of 28-year-old Champion.

In accord with Champion’s wishes, “Amazing Grace” rattled the hall at his funeral.

“It’s crazy,” said Geoff Sanders, 21, one of about 150 people who attended the services, and a co-worker of Champion’s at a Del Mar car stereo store. “It could have happened anywhere. Could have been anyone.”

Champion was shot Monday night while stopped at a traffic light in the Gaslamp Quarter, allegedly by an escaped inmate who demanded his car at gunpoint.

Police were searching for Johnaton George, 34, who they say fled in Champion’s 1989 maroon Honda Civic. A $5,000 reward has been offered by the Sheriff’s Department, the San Diego Police Officer’s Assn., San Diego Crimestoppers and the office of the U.S. Marshal.

A Crime Victims Fund has been set up in Champion’s name by Home Savings in San Diego. The money will go to help Pamela Champion with funeral expenses and temporary living costs.

Underlying the pain Friday was an anger about how violence in society seems to strike at the innocent.

Brian Schmiedeke, 25, a close friend who tends bar at the pub where Champion had been minutes before the shooting, said, “In talking with friends, many of us are totally, totally disgusted with what happened. We are (angry) at the individual who is responsible, but more than that there is a real feeling of shame. We should be ashamed because we are all responsible in some part. We create our own environment; we affect others by how we are. And violence is a part of us.”

Less than 10 minutes after saying goodby to Champion on Monday, Schmiedeke was summoned to the shooting scene by a friend. By the time he arrived, Champion lay dead in the street.

Schmiedeke said friends and relatives have spent the last few days consoling one another while trying to make sense of Champion’s death.

“It’s been very noticeable since Mick’s death, among those that knew him, everyone seems to be taking an extra second to say hello to each other. To say goodby.

“I think we are all more aware now of how much we mean to each other. It’s that feeling, and also that, you never know, your life could be over in a flash. . . . There was Mick laying quiet as a baby on the cement to prove it.”