Officer’s Family Gathers to Honor His Spirit of Idealism

Susan Holguin traveled from Vancouver, B.C. Her daughters, Debbie and Denise, came from Downey and Fresno.

It was a family gathering of sorts that had nothing to do with festivity. Their baggage included a burden of memories they had carried for a dozen years, and their reunion rang with an abiding bitterness toward the man whose existence prompted their trip.

His name is Jack Jefferies. He murdered someone they loved.

The family’s destination was Soledad State Prison, where Jefferies is serving 15 years to life for killing Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy David Lance Holguin in the city of Bell in the autumn of 1984.

David was Susan’s son and the brother of Debbie and Denise. They journeyed to Soledad for the second time in two years to argue that Jefferies should never be released on parole.

So powerful was their presence at his first hearing that he declined to appear and waived his right to parole consideration. It was no less powerful at a hearing Thursday, but this time they had a chance to be heard.

They told the parole board that Jefferies was an evil man who shot their David in the face as he stood with his hands up, and that he then sat on a balcony laughing and drinking beer as David lay dying in the street.

They said that there was no forgiveness for that and they would never relent in their efforts to keep the man in prison. It was a promise rooted in love and written in blood.

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Holguin, 24, had just finished his shift at the Firestone substation and was on his way home at 3 a.m. when he saw a small boy wandering alone.

Though unmarried, Holguin felt close to children, and it was in his nature to stop and help. His sister, Debbie Brooks, said that as an ambulance driver he once held a little boy in his arms who had been hit by a car.

“The child was dying,” she said, “and David was so overcome that he held and tried to comfort him in his last moments. Later that night he cried.”

The attitude of compassion prevailed on the night Holguin was killed. He could have radioed for someone to handle the situation but didn’t.

Homicide Det. Jerry Beck, who investigated the case for the Sheriff’s Department, said that the little boy in Bell, left to wander by a father seeking drugs, was in front of an apartment occupied by Jefferies.

He said that Jefferies spotted the little boy and was coming for him when Holguin, out of uniform, stopped. At some point Jefferies produced a .45-caliber handgun and the deputy raised his hands.

Jefferies, who claimed he didn’t know Holguin was a cop, said he fired because he thought the deputy was reaching for a gun. He called it a tragic mistake. A jury called it second-degree murder.

“When I got to the scene, I saw Jefferies sitting on his balcony, laughing and drinking beer,” Beck said. “It was a moment I’ll never forget.”

Neither will the family.

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I spoke with Holguin’s mother and two sisters by telephone. Beck, a cop for 29 years and one of the most caring officers I’ve ever known, alerted me to the parole hearing. He had been in touch with the family since Holguin’s murder and had never seen surviving relatives so committed.

“If you had known David you would understand why we care so much,” his sister Denise Holguin told me. “He was the most loving, giving person anyone could ever know. He was my big brother and my best friend.”

The picture of David Holguin that emerges is that of an idealistic young man whose spirit of altruism was rare. A lifeguard first and then an ambulance driver and later a hospital worker, he seemed destined to elevate the image of public service to its highest state.

To become a deputy sheriff was his ultimate goal, and he made it among the top 10 in his academy class. “He honestly believed,” his mother said to me, “he could make a difference in this violent world. Who knows what he could have done? Who knows what potential my beautiful son had?”

Denise, who has collected 6,000 signatures on a petition to keep Jefferies in prison, feels strongly that he should never be released.

“Has he paid his debt to society?” she asks rhetorically. “Who the hell is society? I’m society, and he hasn’t paid his debt to me!”

Their presence at the hearing in Soledad had impact. Jefferies’ parole was denied for another four years. But the family spoke as one when later they said there was an emptiness in their lives that nothing could ever fill.

They wanted the world to know that in the sense of violent accomplishment, Jack Jefferies should be proud. One bullet had killed them all.

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Al Martinez can be reached through Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com