Why They’re Driven Is Always on Their Minds

Before Mind Driver had even played a show, people who can help a local band were paying attention and making plans.

The band’s calling card had been a demo tape of four tuneful, hard-hitting punk-pop songs with good, slicing guitar solos, the product of a single hectic recording session at a studio in Brea early this year.

Singer Heath Cofran, whose arrival in November had supplied the missing piece that the four other members had been trying to find for months, began sending the tape to club owners. Quickly, ears were turned and gigs were offered.

But when someone from a club in Costa Mesa called the band to verify a Feb. 5 booking, he got the awful news: Tio Jauregui, the guitarist who had been Mind Driver’s big dreamer and enthusiastic sparkplug, had been shot dead on a Norwalk street at age 27. An angry confrontation--rare for the friendly Jauregui, according to his bandmates, who said he had no enemies--had ended with a single shotgun blast to his stomach.

There was never any question that Mind Driver would go on, the surviving members said recently as they sat in their rehearsal studio here: Going on would be the only way to keep their friend’s dream alive.

Carlos Ortega, a stocky, soft-spoken bassist, had spent the most time with Jauregui, struggling over the past three years to find the right combination of musicians. His eyes grew wet as he recalled the days after Jauregui’s death, and he needed to take long pauses as he talked about the loss of his friend.

“I don’t know if ‘devastating’ is the word,” he said. “When people say, ‘A part of me went with them’ when they lose someone--now I know what they mean.”

At first Jauregui had been just a fan. In 1986, while still a student at Norwalk High School, Ortega had formed the hard-core punk band Walk Proud with guitarist Karl Izumi. Over the next few years, Jauregui, also a Norwalk High student, would go to most of their shows.

Walk Proud released an album in 1990 on Nemesis Records and did some regional touring with their label-mates, the Offspring. In the Bay Area, Walk Proud shared some bills with Green Day. One day in 1993, Ortega ran into Jauregui and mentioned casually that Walk Proud wanted to add a second guitarist and would be holding auditions that night. Ortega was surprised when Jauregui turned up with his guitar and amplifier--he’d never ever mentioned that he played an instrument.

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Jauregui got the gig and stuck with Ortega through some frustrating times. A job transfer to Chicago soon took Izumi out of the band. He stayed in touch with his former mates as they tried, with little success, to make headway under a new name, Dooryard. Izumi, an engineer, returned to Long Beach late in 1994, and the threesome reunited as Mind Driver. It took several months to find a drummer, Mark Combs, and even longer before Cofran arrived.

A Huntington Beach resident and a marketing senior at Cal State Long Beach, Cofran, 25, had only sung for friends at parties before he answered Mind Driver’s ad seeking a singer for a band influenced by Bad Religion and NOFX.

At the audition, it quickly became apparent that there was a match.

“The music clicked with me,” recalls Cofran, a competitive bodyboarder who wears goggle-like glasses and has the outgoing instincts of a natural ham. “It was exactly the style of music I wanted to sing.”

Ortega remembers that “as soon as Heath left the studio, Tio said, ‘I want this guy.’ ”

At first Cofran had trouble with hoarseness at rehearsals. Jauregui suggested he swallow honey as a preventive measure, and the advice worked.

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The tape followed. Among those who heard it were Randy Cash, who books Club 369 in Fullerton (“I listen to at least 40 tapes a week, and that one blew my mind,” Cash says. “A lot of bands just want to be punk rock and don’t care about the songwriting. I’m a sucker for a good song, and [Mind Driver] really stood out”) and Bryce Osborne, who operates the Lava Room in Costa Mesa (“They had a real good sound, real surfy, with a little bit of punk. A great sound for this area, and we knew they were going to do really well. We were getting ready to really help them out and push them.”).

Cash and Osborne both booked the band, but its first gig was at the Tiki Bar on Jan. 25, for about 50 people. Nervous at first, Cofran leaped his first hurdle--adjusting to public performance--and felt at home on stage by the end of the set. Bigger shows were falling into place for the month ahead.

Jauregui was stoked--not that his eager appetite for rock ‘n’ roll needed much stoking. “Tio used to visit me every day at work,” recalls Ortega, 27, a security guard for the Norwalk/La Mirada School District. “Either he had a new song he wanted to work on, or it was, ‘I’ll be at your pad [later], we’re going to practice.’ ”

Jauregui, who had his own truck and hauled construction materials for living, was cutting back on work and devoting more time to the band, Ortega added. “He told me, ‘Why don’t we both quit our jobs, because I know this band is going to make it.’ ”

In December, Izumi, 29, got a card from Jauregui that said, “Have a Merry Xmas, bro--this time next year we’ll be listening to our first Mind Driver album.”

On Jan. 28, the last afternoon of his life, Jauregui went to Ortega’s house for a Super Bowl party. He didn’t care about the game; he brought his guitar, and they worked on songs.

Jauregui was killed that night, just before 11. Official accounts are sketchy as to what happened and why. According to Robert Jordan, assistant head deputy for the Los Angeles County district attorney, Jauregui placed a call that night to a house in Norwalk, asking to speak to a woman who was there. Instead, a man came on the line, and they argued. Jauregui drove to the residence, on Kalnor Avenue, and there he died. He apparently had been holding a chain used for towing; some of his belongings were missing, and his tires had been slashed.

Police subsequently arrested a Norwalk man in connection with the shooting, but with no eyewitness, prosecutors determined that they lacked sufficient evidence to overcome an anticipated claim of self-defense. The murder charge was dismissed March 5. Jauregui’s parents have sent a letter of protest to the district attorney’s office. The investigation remains open, and prosecutors can refile charges if sufficient evidence arises.

“This guy said something that got under his skin, and Tio [went to] confront him about it,” said Jauregui’s stepfather, Vince Lopez.

For Jauregui to get angry enough to confront somebody “was pretty out of character,” Lopez added. “I only know of one other time that he got in a fight. I asked him what happened, and he said some guy was saying a bunch of [crap] to him.”

Jauregui’s bandmates can’t fathom how he came into harm’s way: “Tio didn’t have an enemy in the world,” Ortega said. “I don’t know anybody who disliked Tio.”

Sgt. Mark Winters, the sheriff’s detective on the case, said there was no indication that Jauregui’s death was gang related. During the investigation, he said, “everyone told us what a decent human being he was. We did not find anybody who disputed that. We talked to a lot of people.”

Ortega couldn’t even touch his guitar for two weeks after Jauregui’s funeral. But it was understood that Mind Driver would go on. The band also knew who would take Tio’s place: Mike Lucero of Fullerton, another Norwalk High alum who had been Jauregui’s longtime friend and guitar teacher. With Lucero, 27, the band’s first task in beginning again has been to come up with an arrangement of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

“It’s a song Tio wanted to work on, so it’s the first thing we’ve done,” Cofran said. “He wanted to ‘punk the song out,’ to put it in his words.”

As Mind Driver posed for pictures on a couch in its rehearsal room, the band members asked that Jauregui’s black Ibanez guitar be included in the photos. Nobody will play it from now on, they said, but the music it had a part in creating will continue.

“I really feel that as long as we keep playing, Tio’s dream keeps going,” Ortega said, emotionally. “If we stop playing, he stops living. As long as I keep playing, I keep him alive in my heart.”

* Mind Driver, Downer and Strate Out play Wednesday at Club 369, 1641 Placentia Ave., Fullerton. 8 p.m. $3. (714) 572-1816. Mind Driver also plays March 26 at Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim ([714] 533-1286) and April 8 at the Lava Room in Costa Mesa ([714]) 631-0526.