Friend’s Last Wish Stolen With Truck

After a 29-hour drive from Denver, Ron Towell parked his rental truck on the street at a North Hollywood corner and opened up the back to make sure the black box was still there.

Yes. There it was, the box containing the ashes of his “best friend ever in the whole world,” Armando Aguirre, cremated after dying of AIDS. It had been Aguirre’s fondest hope to have his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

Night was falling. Towell went inside a nearby apartment, to meet friends, to be welcomed back to Los Angeles after the traumatic months in Denver and the pain of Aguirre’s death, to be comforted. He slept soundly, glad to be home.

But when he awoke Friday and looked out the window--the truck was gone.

“The truck, the trailer, my pickup truck on the trailer, everything I owned except the clothes on my back,” Towell said.

“And the ashes. Especially the ashes. Gone. Stolen.

“I can’t believe that someone would do this,” Towell said, “that this could happen to me.”

Missing are a 20-foot Ryder truck with Georgia license plates, the trailer with Florida plates and Towell’s own pickup, a red 1988 Mitsubishi Mighty Max with Colorado plates, which had been locked in the trailer.

Towell reported the theft immediately to Los Angeles police, who said thieves look for moving vans that appear to be heavily laden. Usually, said Officer F. M. Mariscal Jr., who took Towell’s report, such vans resurface within a few days--but often the cargo is gone.

Towell, 29, spent Friday in grief, worrying about the worst--that he will be unable to fulfill his vow to his dying friend. “He feels like a piece of him has been taken away,” said friend Cathy Fredin, 36. “A piece he wants back very dearly.”

“It hurts a lot,” Towell said. “It hurts real bad. This is a promise I made to him, to scatter his ashes. But now I don’t have the ashes. Some stranger does. And those ashes are probably on the side of some road by now, for all I know.”

Ryder officials said Friday they would do what they could to help.

“It’s a tragedy heaped onto the stress of moving,” said Hank Lambert, Ryder operations manager for Southern California in Rancho Cucamonga. “Obviously, I’m deeply touched by this unfortunate situation. We will cooperate with the authorities fully, to prosecute those people who transgress against our fellow human beings.”

Aguirre died Feb. 25, 1992. He was 25. He and Towell had become friends six years before, just after Aguirre moved west from Colorado.

One day several summers back, driving along the coast, they discovered a secluded beach just south of Oxnard. It became their special weekend hideaway.

Even in winter, Aguirre would feel the pull of the sea, Towell said. They would drive from North Hollywood--across the San Fernando Valley, across the county line, all the way out to a beach near Oxnard--to watch the surf pound the shore, to feel the cold wind slash across their skin, to feel vital and alive.

“It was very special,” Towell said.

Aguirre was diagnosed with AIDS and his health began to fail. In September, 1991, he moved back to Denver to be near his family. Towell followed, leaving the Pasadena bank where he had worked for 10 years.

As he was dying, Aguirre asked Towell to spread his ashes in the ocean, at their beach. Towell promised he would.

For the past year, Towell said, he has been in mourning, unemployed in Denver. The ashes remained as they came from the crematorium, in a black plastic container a bit bigger than a coffee can, resting in a black box. On the lid of the plastic container was a white label, with Aguirre’s name, his date of birth and date of death.

“I went looking for an urn,” Towell said. “But I couldn’t find anything to suit him. It felt frivolous to buy something to put them in and then go pour him out of it. That didn’t make sense to me.”

About a month ago, Towell decided the time had come to head west for the ocean and carry out his promise.

Into the 20-foot truck went everything he owned: a black lacquered table, four dark blue metal chairs, a multicolored tapestry, a refrigerator painted black and white to look like a cow, two color television sets, a dark blue couch, a mirrored coffee table, a dark pine bed and matching dresser--and, when everything else was aboard, the box holding the ashes.

Towell left Denver at 2 p.m. Wednesday. He arrived in North Hollywood at 7 p.m. Thursday and parked the truck at the corner of Bakman Avenue and Huston Street, just down the block from a friend’s apartment.

He didn’t think about taking anything inside but his cat, Trixie, who had crossed the mountains with him in the cab of the truck. Everything in back, he figured, would be safe on the street for just one night.

“Everything else in that truck is just things,” Towell said. “What I want are the ashes back.”