Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Friends, Family Mourn Victims : Funerals: Neighbors say goodby to man who did jobs for them. Father of 4-year-old girl says: ‘Nature gave her to us and nature took her away.’

Ted Fichtner, one of three earthquake victims buried Friday, was interred wearing a flannel shirt and jeans donated by neighbors who adopted the once-homeless man 10 years ago and made sure he never was in need again.

Fichtner, 28, repaid his Chatsworth Lake benefactors by performing odd jobs, often for free, and by becoming a surrogate brother to many neighborhood children. He died Monday in a donated camper when a microwave oven flew off a table and struck him in the head.

On Friday, those neighborhood children--now teen-agers and young adults--tenderly tucked snapshots of themselves into his open casket and tried to make sense of his death.

“He never did anything wrong to anybody and this shouldn’t have happened,” said Cheyenne O’Dea, 16, one of 35 people who attended Fichtner’s funeral.

Shortly before Fichtner was laid to rest, private services were held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, for another earthquake victim--Myrna Velazquez, 18, of North Hollywood, who died in the collapse of the Northridge Meadows apartment complex.

Across the San Fernando Valley, 4-year-old Amy Tyre-Vigil was remembered at a Reseda temple, where cracks and peeling paint silently reminded the 250 mourners of the quake’s force. Amy’s short life ended when her parents’ Sherman Oaks home collapsed around her.

“Nature gave her to us,” said her father, Anastacio Vigil, “and nature took her away.”

It did not take a natural disaster for the close-knit community of Chatsworth Lake to come to Fichtner’s aid 10 years ago. When Suzi O’Dea discovered Fichtner, then 18, living under an oak tree, she immediately brought him home.

“It just comes naturally,” said O’Dea, a masseuse and therapist. “I remember (when) growing up my father brought home all these needy people who I used to think were my big brothers.”

Fichtner became a neighborhood fixture. About nine months ago, after a resident with whom he had been staying died, he moved into the camper of Margaret Foreman, O’Dea’s mother.

Fichtner made a meager living doing odd jobs and gardening. He was remembered Friday for his selflessness. After last year’s floods, O’Dea said, he steam-cleaned carpets for free.

“It isn’t for us to answer why he died,” Foreman said. “Chatsworth Lakes is a little bit of Arkansas in the middle of Los Angeles,” she said. “We just take people under our wing.”