Guard’s Smile and His Fears Recalled

Family and friends sometimes suggested that Ricardo Gomez, the armored truck guard shot to death in an Anaheim robbery Monday, find a less dangerous line of work.

But Gomez, 29, downplayed the dangers, even though he had talked in recent weeks of finding a different job. His time would come when it came, he told his older brother, Gabriel Gomez. He liked his job, the exchange of smiles with regular customers, the camaraderie with his co-workers. Most of all, he liked knowing that he was providing well for his wife and their 3-year-old son, Brandon.

Fear of robbery “was there, everyone knew it,” Gomez’s brother-in-law Dave Gordon said Tuesday. “But he was happy. He had big plans. That’s why he was working so many hours.”

Gomez made deliveries for Brinks six days a week, up to 12 hours a day, family members said. There was the mortgage to pay on the house in Orange, where family members with red-rimmed eyes gathered Tuesday. To get inside, they pushed past a beaming plastic Santa Claus.

There was the camper Gomez planned to buy so he and Brandon could go camping in the desert. There was the remodeling of the living room, which Gomez was doing on his days off and had recently finished. And of course, there were big plans for Christmas.

The festive holiday decorations were up, but the mood was somber as Gomez’s family coped with tragedy and how to tell Brandon that his father is not coming home.

Anaheim police have put more than a dozen detectives on the case but so far have turned up little, said Sgt. Rick Martinez, a spokesman for the department.

What they know is that Gomez was shot to death in the hallway of an Anaheim catering-truck supply company where he was making a cash pickup. The gunman fled on foot with an undetermined amount of cash. Witnesses said he was in his 40s, cleanshaven, white, 6 feet tall and 180 to 200 pounds.

What they do not know is who the man is or how he got into the building, which has only one entrance that is staffed by a receptionist.

“A lot of people think they saw the suspect, but we don’t have enough yet, at this point, to put out a better description,” Martinez said. “We don’t want to send people out on a wild-goose chase.”

Brinks officials have set up a trust fund for Gomez’s son and his widow, Veronica.

The loss has devastated not just the Gomez family but also their close-knit neighborhood. One neighbor Tuesday lowered his frontyard flag to half-mast. Others streamed into the family’s home to pay their respects.

“He is my son,” said Belen Gomez through tears, her voice breaking. “A very good man. Very hard-working. Very good to his mother.’

Gomez, the sixth of eight children, was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Santa Ana and graduated from Santa Ana High School.

He was shy but known for his ear-to-ear smile, said brother-in-law Victor Bermudez, who went to school with Gomez.

Six years ago, Gomez married in a ceremony in the state of Yucatan, Mexico, where the family of his bride, Veronica, has its roots.

Gomez’s family is from the state of Zacatecas, but his brothers and sisters live in Southern California and gather weekly for dinner.

Gabriel Gomez, Ricardo’s older brother, said that Sunday, he thought what a great father Ricardo was.

Brother-in-law Gordon, who lives across the street and used to work for an armored truck company, remembered his final conversation with Ricardo, after a family dinner last week.

“As he walked out the door, I said, ‘Watch it out there. It’s Christmas. It’s dangerous,’ ” Gordon said. People carry more money at Christmas, making armored truck drivers bigger targets for robbery, Gordon explained. “That was the last time I saw him.”

A distraught Veronica Gomez would not talk Tuesday.

Through Gordon, she had a message for the gunman: “ ‘Let the person out there know that he just wrecked a family,’ ” she told her brother-in-law.

*

Times staff writer David Haldane contributed to this report.