Stunned Town Mourns Snowboarder’s Death

Jeff Thornton, remembered for his joyful and energetic personality, was bade farewell Wednesday by a community left traumatized by the teenager’s perilous disappearance while snowboarding in the San Gabriel Mountains, his seemingly miraculous rescue after six days and his unexpected death a week later.

An estimated 1,500 people attended a tearful and prayer-filled memorial service at the Brawley Union High School football field, where the 14-year-old had played last fall as a lineman on the freshmen team.

The boy’s mother, Lori Thornton, was choked with tears as she thanked her son’s friends for their prayers during his ordeal and members of the search and rescue team that refused to give up.

“Especially I want to thank God for giving me back my son if just for a short time,” she told the crowd. “Imagine my joy when my baby was found alive. We shared precious moments. But I didn’t know those moments wouldn’t last.”

To many in this deeply religious community, the youth’s rescue after six days and nights of driving wind and subfreezing temperatures was nothing less than a miracle. That feeling made his death Friday at Loma Linda University Medical Center even more shocking.

“Through the grace of God, the prayers of his friends and the hard work of the search and rescue team, Jeff was brought back alive to his mother,” said the Rev. Scott Peterson, pastor of Brawley’s First Presbyterian Church, which the boy and his family attended. “The tale of his tragedy has brought out the best in this community.”

Students at Brawley High were struggling Wednesday to cope with the death of their classmate, who was remembered as cheerful, polite and studious. School was dismissed early so the youths could attend the memorial.

Tuesday night, at a private service and viewing, members of the Wildcat football team gave Lori Thornton a signed blue and gold jersey bearing her husky son’s number, 54.

“It’s just not fair, not fair, that God gave him back to us and then took him away again,” Yvette Espinoza, 15, said. “A lot of kids don’t understand it at all.”

“I’ve never seen the town like this before,” said Marin Morgan, 15. “Everyone was praying for Jeff, and now everyone is mourning for him.”

Kylee Singh, 14, said many of the students who attended the viewing were so shaken they could not go to school the next morning.

“I couldn’t look at him,” Singh said. “Looking at him scared a lot of people. People are so heartbroken over this.”

Peterson told the memorial service that Thornton’s best football game was against Imperial Valley archrival Calexico High School, where he summoned the grit to outplay a much bigger player opposing him across the line.

“That same determination helped him survive six days of cold, hunger and loneliness,” Peterson said. “He survived six days in the open but could not survive his seventh day of recovery.”

Thornton disappeared Feb. 7 at the 6,000-foot level near Wrightwood while on a snowboarding outing with his uncle Marc Shapiro.

Thornton was walking behind him, Shapiro said, but apparently decided to set off independently to find fresh snow. When Shapiro looked back, his nephew was gone.

The teenager was found by the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team in a ravine two miles south of the New Mountain High ski resort. He was disoriented, hungry and suffering from frostbite.

While the Brawley native was missing, his fellow students held prayer vigils and wore buttons bearing his picture and blue ribbons with the words “In Hope of Jeff Thornton.” Talk of his fate dominated life at the 85-year-old high school in the middle of this 19,000-resident farm town.

“The students were convinced that Jeffrey wouldn’t be lost if they just prayed hard enough and wished hard enough,” said counselor Lisa Santos Tabarez. “The school and the community came together in one giant spirit.”

Residents of Brawley were exultant to learn that the teenager had been recovered alive.

At his family’s request, the two hospitals where he was treated--Foothill Presbyterian in Glendora first, then Loma Linda--gave out little information about his medical condition. Many of those who prayed for Thornton at the school flagpole each morning assumed that he was on the road to recovery.

In subsequent days, a Loma Linda hospital spokesman reported that Thornton had asked his mother to bring him copies of snowboarding magazines. And a friend had gathered his homework so that he wouldn’t fall behind in his studies.

But Friday night at 10:39 p.m., Thornton’s heart gave out. His body was never able to recover from the frostbite, dehydration and broken bones he suffered, medical officials said.

A last-ditch effort to hook Thornton to a heart-lung machine to add oxygen to his blood backfired when one tube punctured the right atrium of his heart.

Dr. Frank Sheridan, chief medical examiner for San Bernardino County, ruled Sunday that the teenager died of complications of gangrene, sepsis and lung problems and that there was a “very high possibility” that he would have died even if the heart chamber had not been punctured.

Thornton is remembered in Brawley as a hard-working student, a member of 4-H and his church choir, and a skateboarder and weightlifter who was determined to make the varsity football team.

Lori Thornton owns one of the town’s more popular women’s apparel stores, Country Casuals. When her son disappeared, neighbors rallied behind the family, bringing food to the house, offering to do anything helpful, joining in the prayers.

“We were all so deliriously happy when Jeff was found,” said his English teacher, Charlotte Browder. “Then when he died, it was so devastating to all of us.”

The school district rushed additional counselors and psychologists to the high school to aid students in emotional turmoil.

“Brawley is a farm community,” said Bud Smith, deputy principal at the school. “Farm communities know how to pull together when tragedy hits.”