Friends and Relatives Mourn Roberta Happe

Just before Roberta Happe graduated from high school, she presented each of her teachers with a small journal, its creamy pages blank except for the inscription she had written.

“Dear Mr. Allen,” she wrote to math teacher Bob Allen. “I still hate derivatives. That isn’t your fault, though. You did a great job trying.”

Six years after Happe left Crescenta Valley High School, about 1,000 tearful friends and relatives of the vivacious 23-year-old gathered at her old school Saturday to remember her. Many noted that her last name--pronounced “happy”--was a perfect fit for a young woman known for doling out generous hugs and calling up friends simply to say she loved them.

Last week, Happe’s life ended when she was kidnapped, raped and killed as she walked through a Wilshire Boulevard parking garage to retrieve her car after work. Police have arrested Jason Thompson, 23, on suspicion of murder and other crimes in the Feb. 22 attack, tracking him down in Saginaw, Mich., after a tip from his relatives.

On Saturday, throngs of young people clad in somber colors milled outside the school, hugging each other and crying as they waited in a long line to get into the packed memorial service. Among those attending were many of Happe’s friends from USC, where she earned a business degree in 1999.

After graduating, Happe maintained close ties to her alma mater, serving as the alumni chairwoman of Helenes, a USC women’s service club. “She was still very involved, very connected,” said Dianne Molina, a college friend. “She was the type of person you know you’re going to see at football games when you go back.”

The Rev. Diane Kenney, a campus minister at USC, set the tone for the memorial by inviting the audience to join “a celebration of the gift her life was.”

“We gather wrapped in the conflicts accompanying us: overwhelming pain and grief at a life that was unaccountably cut short,” Kenney said. “We gather seeking answers where there are none. But what many of you know personally is you were blessed with the presence of Roberta.”

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By all accounts, Happe was enthusiastic and outgoing, the type of person who would drive the gridlocked length of Los Angeles in a heartbeat to see a friend. She loved Disney theme parks--her father, Pete, is a Disney employee who helped design many of the parks’ theaters--and she looked forward to Christmas so she could dub her family’s tree with a silly name.

Linda Evans, Happe’s high school English teacher, is one of several Crescenta Valley faculty members still carting around the little books Happe had given her years ago. Happe teased Evans about being a “Shakespeare fanatic,” scrawling on the first page of the journal: “Lord knows we’ve seen and discussed much ado about nothing too many times.”

According to police, Thompson confronted Happe as she was leaving work at a nonprofit organization that helps disabled people. Authorities said a security guard saw the pair drive out together. Although it seemed unusual that the young woman had not waved goodbye, police said, the guard found nothing odd to report.

Bank surveillance photos allegedly show Thompson and Happe at an ATM machine on Crenshaw Boulevard less than an hour later. Police say Thompson forced her to withdraw $400. Later that night, Happe’s stabbed, strangled and beaten body was found in a parking lot at Culver City Park.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office issued a felony arrest warrant for Thompson. He’s accused of murder with the special circumstance of torture, murder in the commission of kidnapping, kidnapping for carjacking, robbery, forcible rape, sexual assault and ATM robbery.

The manhunt ended Friday night in Michigan when Thompson was arrested in a friend’s apartment. Police said they sprayed Thompson with Mace after he refused to come out of a bathroom. He is being held without bail in Saginaw County Jail. Culver City police were en route to Michigan on Saturday to work on Thompson’s extradition, Saginaw Police Officer Doug Wortley said.

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Times staff writer Richard Fausset contributed to this article.