Thousands Pay Last Respects to Slain Deputy

Those who knew him wept as they remembered Brad Riches, a police officer kind enough to treat jail inmates as his “customers” but tough enough to win a medal of courage for wrestling a gun away from a distraught man.

Thousands who didn’t know him came to mourn too. Members of Southern California’s law enforcement community, they helped lay to rest someone slain for doing what they do every day.

Many deputies cried openly at the Lake Forest church where the 34-year-old officer was eulogized Wednesday as giant video screens flashed a montage of photographs of his life. He was shot to death while on patrol Saturday by a gunman who allegedly wanted to kill a cop.

Sheriff Mike Carona paid tribute to the nine-year veteran’s dedication to the community he patrolled, saying that Riches died because his killer “just hated cops.”

“Brad became the sacrificial lamb for all of us in law enforcement,” Carona said, his voice at times cracking with emotion. “Brad took the bullets for all of us in law enforcement. Wrong time, wrong place.”

Riches was sitting in his patrol car about 1 a.m. Saturday outside a 7-Eleven when he was riddled with assault weapon fire. A rifle-wielding customer moments earlier had told the terrified store clerk that he carried the gun not to rob the store but to shoot a police officer.

Within hours, deputies arrested a 39-year-old unemployed laborer, Maurice Gerald Steskal, and recovered an AK-47-style rifle they believe was used in the attack.

The nature of the assault stunned many law enforcement officers. On Wednesday, about 4,000 people attended the service at the nondenominational Saddleback Valley Community Church. A lone trumpet playing “Amazing Grace” broke the silence in the packed church, a checkerboard of green, tan and blue uniforms.

At one point during Wednesday’s service, these words appeared on a giant video screen: “They Are Not Dead Who Live in the Lives They Leave Behind.” The words were inscribed by Riches himself as part of a memorial he constructed to honor five deputies slain on duty.

Riches is the sixth to be killed in the department’s 110-year history and the first since 1958 to be slain on patrol. Carona said Riches’ portrait would soon join the others on the memorial wall he carved from wood.

His best friend, his older brother, Robert, recalled his sibling’s determination to treat everyone with respect, including the jail inmates he guarded, whom he called “customers.” Robert Riches said he and his brother occasionally bumped into some of those same inmates outside of jail.

“These inmates used to greet Brad with a handshake and a smile,” he said.

A pastor at Saddleback, Glen Kruen, recalled Riches’ life. Born in Quebec, Canada, Riches moved to Orange County at 6 months, when his father Bruce’s job as an engineer for an oil company took them south.

As work took the Riches family around the world, the young Brad grew up traveling--to Holland, Singapore and Indonesia. Such an upbringing nurtured within the young boy an adventurous spirit, something that would stay with him into adulthood.

“He had an insatiable appetite to travel,” said Deputy Tim Cullen, who worked alongside Riches in the jails when they became deputies in 1990.

“We were in chow hall [in the jail] together when things went bad,” Cullen said. “We were in the briefing room together when things got funny. It’s like a part of you dying.”

The Riches family eventually moved back to Orange County, where Brad Riches graduated from Dana Hills High School in 1984. The young man served as a part-time firefighter.

After becoming a U.S. citizen so that he could join a police department, Riches was appointed a special officer with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in 1989, a position just below the rank of deputy. A year later, he was awarded the Medal of Courage after wrestling a gun away from a distraught welfare recipient at a county office.

In 1990, he was hired as a deputy. He worked in the county jails for eight years, and was then transferred. His new assignment was to patrol the quiet bedroom community of Lake Forest, a job that his friends say he relished. He was in the position only 10 months.

After the funeral service, hundreds of green-uniformed sheriff’s deputies lined a path from the church to a white hearse. Behind them stood officers from agencies as far as San Diego and Riverside.

As a lone bagpiper played “Going Home,” family and friends wheeled the coffin out of the church. Under a fierce sun, hundreds of black-and-white patrol cars formed a glittering trail along the Lake Forest streets as Riches’ casket made the short journey to El Toro Memorial Park for burial.

Following requests from the family, deputies did not give the casket a gun salute. But just before the coffin was lowered, seven sheriff’s helicopters flew overhead in V-formation.