Californian Was a Pilot on Brown Plane

A Newport Beach native was identified Thursday as one of the Air Force pilots of the plane that crashed into a remote hillside near the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, killing Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and 34 others aboard.

Capt. Tim Shafer, 33, a 1980 graduate of Newport Harbor High School, was stationed in Germany, where he flew dignitaries throughout Europe, his sister said Thursday.

Susan Haydon, 36, said her family has been rocked by grief. Although her brother’s military career took him around the globe, his family always assumed he was out of harm’s way, she said.

“He was never flying fighters or planes with guns or anything like that,” Haydon said. “We always thought that it wasn’t going to happen to him. We always said, ‘He’s flying dignitaries and leaders around, he’ll be safe. I guess we were wrong, though.”

Shafer grew up in Newport Beach, where he was a Boy Scout and later ran track for Newport Harbor High, always dreaming of becoming a pilot, his sister said. He attended Orange Coast College for two years before moving to Sacramento, where he got his private pilot’s license while going to the state university.

He joined the Air Force after graduation and earned his military pilot’s wings in 1989, going on to fly C-141 Starlifter cargo planes out of Travis Air Force Base in the Bay Area. His performance landed him among the pilots selected to transport “generals and senators,” Haydon said.

Six months ago, he and his wife, Kathleen Shafer, moved to Germany for his new assignment: flying dignitaries throughout Europe from his post at Ramstein Air Force Base, 75 miles southwest of Frankfurt. He had made several trips into the airport at Dubrovnik, his sister said, so he was familiar with the area where the crash occurred Sunday in a blinding storm.

“He had been there before, so we don’t know what might have happened,” Haydon said. “We don’t know much more than we hear on CNN. We want to find out what happened, what went wrong. It won’t change anything, but we want to know.”

The family was not sure if Shafer was the lead pilot on the Brown mission.

Haydon described her only sibling as “a golden boy, everyone’s pride and treasure” for his exploits in the Air Force, including flying the president and first lady on several occasions. (She did not know when those flights occurred). He also flew humanitarian missions into Turkey and Iraq.

“But he was never boastful; he was really quiet about it all,” she said. “He was the best of the best. All his life he wanted to fly, he had a passion for it, and when he got sent to Germany it was a dream come true.”