Faith and Farewells

In a small country church filled with sad faces, one face was sadder than all the rest. Heidi Hocker, 18, sat before an ebony casket, blaming herself for the death of 20-year-old Joshua Turville, one of three deeply religious former Orange County men killed by their housemate last week.

Following Turville’s memorial service Monday at Ignacio Community Church, Hocker tried to tell Turville’s father that she was sorry. But Steven Turville would have none of it.

“If you’re feeling guilty,” he said, “don’t.”

Relieved, Hocker put her head on his shoulder and began to weep. Then he kissed her and thanked God for her safety, and she wept harder.

Two weeks ago, before leaving for her freshman year at the University of Northern Colorado, Hocker ended a summer romance with Joseph Edward Gallegos, an 18-year-old with a well-documented mean streak.

Apparently, the breakup left Gallegos so despondent that he spent days in a spiral of drugs and violent music, culminating the morning of Sept. 24 with the three murders and a police shootout 400 miles away in Hocker’s dormitory.

But just as Turville’s father harbored no bitterness toward Hocker, she professed only love for Gallegos, who shot her in the foot before police stopped his 13-hour crime spree with a fatal bullet to the neck.

“I want everyone to know that Joe was not a bad person,” Hocker said, blanching at the pain in her cast-encased foot. “He was a wonderful person. I never had any anger toward him, even when he was doing this. He was a wonderful friend to me.”

Hocker also loved Turville, however, and she couldn’t mention his name without blinking back tears. “Josh was one of my very dear friends,” she said. “He was the most hilarious person I ever met.”

That humor, combined with a serious and devout faith, made Turville’s memorial service an unusual event, as friends took turns describing the young man’s silliness and his single-minded love of God.

After an elderly Ignacio resident urged the 50 worshipers on hand to heed what he called the message of Turville’s life--that hellfire and eternal anguish await those who don’t accept Jesus as their savior--a young Orange County man told goofy stories about Turville’s penchant for sleep and strangers.

Everyone guffawed when Erik Williams of Tustin recalled the countless stray people Turville brought home to his parents’ house in Orange. Moments later, the church fell uncomfortably silent when Williams conceded: “It wasn’t always the smartest thing to do.”

Days before the murders, the worshipers knew, Turville invited Gallegos into his home, despite the teen’s lengthy criminal record.

Again the mood lifted when Turville’s longtime friend Zac Stankovits talked about “Josh Man,” whose hairy appearance rivaled Bigfoot and whose life seemed comically free of hardship.

Frequently, Zankovits said, Turville worried that he wasn’t a battle-tested Christian because he hadn’t endured a single trial or tribulation. Stankovits drew belly laughs when he read a passage from Turville’s diary, in which Turville bemoaned his lack of angst.

“It’s hard to believe anyone has a better life than me,” he read. “Stress? What’s that? There are no problems in my life. My only problem is, I have no problems.”

When he stepped to the pulpit, Pastor Jeb Bryant noted the humor of the memorial service, which he called a joyful celebration of Turville’s ascent to heaven.

Steven David Bates, 20, and John Anthony Lara III, 20, joined Turville here not long ago, and the three men often told friends how thrilled they were to be living on their own at last.

Still, they couldn’t resist rescuing a teen in distress, Bryant said, so they gladly offered their empty garage to Gallegos, who had recently won parole from the halfway house Bryant runs for juvenile delinquents.

It was at Bryant’s halfway house that Turville and Hocker first met Gallegos. And it was there that Gallegos seemed to become calmer, attending prayer meetings and winning people with his charm.

“He was my best friend this summer,” Hocker said. “But when I went to school and had all that freedom, he just went crazy.”

Hocker said she’d heard a theory that Gallegos had killed Turville, Bates and Lara because they had learned somehow that he intended to kill her. But before dying, Hocker said, Gallegos told her he didn’t understand his own motivations.

“All he told me is: ‘I don’t know why I did that. I went crazy.’

“His exact words. I’ll remember them the rest of my life.”