Flight 77

American Airlines Flight 77 was en route to Los Angeles from Washington’s Dulles Airport when it crashed into the Pentagon.

Ruben Ornedo

Ruben Ornedo, 39, of Eagle Rock, was originally scheduled to leave next week. He was a satellite communications engineer for Boeing, and during a lull in an extended Washington business trip he seized the chance to rush home for a day or two and see his wife of three months, Sheila, who is pregnant.

“He thought it was worth the trip just to see her,” said his brother, Dr. Eduardo Ornedo, of Sylmar.

Born in the Philippines, Ruben Ornedo came to the United States with his family when he was in grade school. He graduated from Fairfax High in Los Angeles and got a computer engineering degree from UCLA.

Widely traveled, athletic, fond of hiking and mountain climbing, he was also deep into renovating the house that he and his wife had just bought. One of his “hobbies,” his brother said, was going to Home Depot.

His death stunned the family, said sister-in-law Stephanie Ornedo.

“We’re still in denial,” she said.

Christopher Newton

Like a lot of road warriors, Christopher Newton, 39, longed to be at home. As the president of Work/Life Benefits--a Cypress firm that helped executives balance their professional and personal lives--he traveled some 200,000 miles a year, mostly by air to the East Coast.

To spend more time with his wife of 15 years and their two children, ages 7 and 10, he transplanted the family and company to northern Virginia earlier this year. He was flying to Los Angeles on Tuesday to finalize company arrangements.

“That’s one of the horrible ironies of this whole thing,” said a friend and co-worker, Denise Markley. “One reason he moved to the East Coast was so that he wouldn’t have to travel so much.” Reared in Long Beach, where his parents live, Newton earned degrees from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UCLA, and for a long time sang in his church choir. He is also survived by a sister and brother.

“The world lost a really good person,” said his mother, Barbra Newton. “He was very excited about the future.”

Mari-Rae Sopper

Mari-Rae Sopper, 35, was a lawyer in Washington whose love of athletics and teaching finally won the day. She’d just quit the law to become the women’s gymnastics coach at UC Santa Barbara.

That’s why she was aboard Flight 77.

Unmarried and originally from the Chicago area, she had coached gymnastics at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she was an attorney with the judge advocate general. She also coached at the Colorado Gymnastics Institute and at a Junior Olympics center in Dallas.

Her would-be colleagues in Santa Barbara hardly knew her, other than as an enthusiastic voice on the phone and a highly recommended coach.

“Her background in dance and choreography, her education, plus her many years of coaching . . . should bring a new and exciting dimension to our women’s program,” a university press release said last month.

Law colleagues at the firm of Schmeltzer, Aptaker and Shepard applauded the way she pursued her dream, said managing director Tom Esslinger: “She decided she wasn’t happy being a lawyer and decided to do something she was happy with, and we supported her.”

Dora Menchaca

She wanted to save lives.

Dora Menchaca, 45, of Santa Monica led a drug research team at Amgen, the Thousand Oaks biotechnology firm. That mission took her to Washington, where she briefed Food and Drug Administration officials on a new prostate cancer drug before heading home Tuesday.

“She was passionate about trying to develop these drugs to help the patients,” said a co-worker, David Goodkin.

She and her husband of 18 years, Earl Dorsey, had two children, Jaryd, 5, and Imani, 18, a University of Portland student and soccer player.

Amgen colleagues remembered Menchaca, who had a doctorate in epidemiology from UCLA, as an energetic researcher who worked through the night when necessary.

“Dora was always a champion for the patient,” CEO Kevin Sharer and other top managers said in a company statement. “Her passion and belief in doing whatever it takes to help patients and advance science will have a lasting impact.”

“She had the greatest laugh,” said her colleague and friend MaryAnn Foote. “She was always laughing.”

Chandler Keller

Skiing, surfing, white-water rafting--he lived with gusto. And Chandler “Chad” Keller’s work also entailed a measure of testing nature’s limits: The 29-year-old was a propulsion engineer at Boeing Satellite Systems in El Segundo. He’d been in Washington on business.

“He had very little fear of anything and he lived his life on the edge. He did everything like that,” said his father, Richard Keller of Del Mar.

He loved rockets as a kid, and spent many a night in Manhattan Beach launching them with his father. The family also lived in Hong Kong, Australia and New York City before returning to Southern California. He graduated from a Torrance high school and went to college in Colorado, where he studied aerospace engineering.

“He was a happy person, someone everyone loved to be around,” said his wife, Lisa Hurley Keller. They were married last year.

He’s also survived by his mother and two brothers.

Suzanne Calley

Suzanne Calley, 42, lived with her husband Frank Jensen in the rural community of San Martin, just south of San Jose.

She loved the outdoors, skiing near Lake Tahoe in the winter and scuba diving whenever she could--Monterey, Hawaii, Belize. The couple were diving in the Caribbean not long before she went to Washington.

A California native and Cal State Chico graduate, she worked for the San Jose computer networking giant Cisco Systems in strategic marketing.

“Suzanne’s energy and enthusiasm were contagious,” Cisco said in a statement. “She was highly respected by her friends and colleagues and her presence will be greatly missed by all.”

“She was vivacious, full of fun, ready to go and organized, happy,” said her next-door neighbor, Diana Christie.

She leaves behind her father, mother and brother.

“I loved her more than life itself,” her husband said in a statement. Their 20th wedding anniversary was Wednesday.

Yeneneh Betru

A native of Ethiopia who was raised in Saudi Arabia, Yeneneh Betru, 35, came to the United States as a young man for an education. He got one, at a boarding school in Colorado and then Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

He wanted to be a physician. He became one, earning his medical degree at the University of Michigan.

“Ever since he was a little kid, he always wanted to be a doctor,” said one of his brothers, Sirak Betru. “He always wanted to help people.”

He lived in Burbank and was director of medical affairs for IPC, a North Hollywood-based company that manages hospital services.

For him, Flight 77 was a connecting flight. He’d been in Ethiopia. “He said he had met a girl back there, someone he was serious about,” his brother Sirak said. “He was going to tell me about it. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him.”

He’s survived by his parents, two brothers and a sister.

Wilson and Darlene Flagg

Wilson and Darlene Flagg, both 63, were high school sweethearts in Long Beach. They got married after Wilson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, the start of a long and mostly distinguished career in which he rose to the rank of rear admiral.

Bud and Dee, as their many friends called them, were attending the 40th reunion of his academy class in Annapolis before getting on Flight 77. They split their time between a Las Vegas residence and a cattle ranch in Virginia.

Wilson Flagg retired from the Navy in 1995.

He flew an F-8 Crusader supersonic jets in Vietnam, logging more hours on the aircraft than any other pilot, and flew photo reconnaissance missions after the war.

He became a rear admiral in 1987, posted at the Pentagon as one of the top officers for the Naval Reserve. It was in that capacity that he was tarnished by the sex harassment scandal at the 1991 Tailhook conference, named after the device the catches planes landing on an aircraft carrier. He organized the conference.

Leo Willetts, a close friend and Navy colleague, said the scandal didn’t diminish the rear admiral’s love of the service.

“If you met them, you were friends with them for life,” Willetts said. “They had a gift for friendship.”