Victims’ Neighbors and Colleagues Recall ‘Four Great People’ : Shootings: Friends offer comfort to families of the slain men; one was Los Angeles’ most senior city employee. ‘It’s really a tragic loss,’ a co-worker says.

There was really nothing special to mark the beginning of the day for any of the four, just another workday at “Piper Tech” for Tony Gain and Neil Carpenter, James Walton and Marty Wakefield.

They all made their separate ways Wednesday to the huge, nondescript brick building in a gritty section of the city just east of Downtown. Police helicopters take off from the top of the structure, while inside civilian workers toil in obscurity at various radio and communication tasks needed to keep the city running.

But then came the man with the gun, bent on killing all four men. Some said it had to do with the fact that the man had gotten a poor job performance evaluation. Whatever the reason, police say he picked out Gain, Carpenter, Walton and Wakefield--all of them supervisors--as his targets and killed them all with deadly efficiency.

In slaying Gain, the gunman took the life of Los Angeles’ most senior municipal employee, a 78-year-old Montebello man who had continued working for years after he could have retired with a pension as high as his salary.

“He’s been working essentially for free,” said Phil Henning, the city’s assistant personnel director.

In the hours that followed the killing of the four, friends and neighbors went to the homes of the slain men to offer comfort to their families and to shelter them from the questions of reporters.

In Montebello, a policeman stood guard at the door of the Gain home, a two-story brown and beige structure. Neighbors said Gain was often seen washing his cars in the morning and that he and his wife spent much of their time together.

He was, by many accounts, a man who loved his work. He joined the city work force in 1942, when City Hall was still the tallest building in town, as a radio technician in the Police Department.

A native Angeleno, he worked his way up the ranks to senior radio technician in 1949, police communications engineer in 1955, chief of the electronics division in 1963, and was promoted to his last position as senior communications engineer in 1971. His salary was $79,156 a year.

Gain not only held bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cal State Los Angeles but also graduated from Southwestern University School of Law, said city personnel officials.

Bill Ashdown, a retired assistant city clerk who knew Gain, said the slain man was instrumental in developing a modern communications system for the Fire Department in the 1960s.

“It’s really a tragic loss,” said Ashdown, who was at Piper Tech on Wednesday working part time in the top-level records center. He said he and other workers came out of the building when they heard sirens, but they had not heard any gunshots.

“He was a good man,” Ashdown said of Gain. “He was very helpful to the Fire Department. We relied on his expertise a whole lot.”

“He was old-fashioned--a real, true gentleman,” said another city official, Faye Washington, who added that she first met Gain 26 years ago when they both worked for the Police Department.

In Carpenter’s Palmdale neighborhood, the slain senior communications electrician supervisor was characterized by friends as a devoted husband who took his wife, Marda, on camping trips nearly every weekend in the couple’s motor home. He and Walton had recently given suspect Willie Woods a poor work evaluation, officials said.

Carpenter was “a self-determined, strong individual,” said Gary Sande, who lives across the street. “He’s not the type who would buckle under. He would stand his ground.”

Marda Carpenter, who baby-sat for him, would often walk one of the couple’s dogs to the corner late in the weekday afternoon to meet her husband as he was dropped off by a commuter van, neighbors said.

Sande, who works in the San Fernando Valley, said he received an urgent call from Marda Carpenter early Wednesday afternoon. “She just said her husband had been shot and killed,” he said. “She needed our help.”

In Wakefield’s Venice neighborhood, people described him as a man who once hired a gardener to clean up junk from city property. Mickey Gallagher, a neighbor, said Wakefield was a ham radio operator, a pilot and a hobbyist who restored cars.

“He was one of the fairest, most respected guys,” Gallagher said.

Walton, a 25-year city employee was, like the others, a communications electrician supervisor. For the last several years, he had spent much of the time dealing with Fire Department communications equipment.

“All four of these were very good supervisors,” said Gary Stout, personnel director for the Department of General Services. “I can’t understand why anyone would want to harm them. They are four great people.”

Times staff writers John Schwada, Susan Moffat, John Glionna, Jeff Leeds and Nora Zamichow contributed to this story.