Hundreds Honor Slain CHP Officer

Everywhere they looked, the hundreds of mourners who filled the pews at Calvary Chapel in Downey on Tuesday could see emotional reminders of what they lost when Officer Thomas Steiner was gunned down.

There was Steiner’s flag-draped casket, of course, and his grieving family sitting at the front of the church. But perhaps the most poignant reminders were the photographs.

Projected onto a giant screen during the service, the photographs provided a glimpse of some of the 35-year-old California Highway Patrol officer’s happiest moments: standing on a beach with his wife, Heidi; his parents, Ron and Carole, smiling down on their grandchildren; Steiner bottle-feeding his baby son; and, later, the infant peacefully resting his chin on his father’s shoulder.

The family was shattered on April 21 when, according to police, Valentino Arenas -- a 16-year-old with a starkly different family life -- drove up to Steiner outside a Pomona courthouse and shot him point-blank in the head, allegedly to impress members of a Pomona street gang.

Investigators said Arenas, a juvenile delinquent in a family of parolees, confessed later that he shot Steiner to win stature with the gang.

“The death of Tom Steiner has reached a new low in our history,” said CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick of his agency. “ ... A despicable little coward murdered Tom in cold blood. I have a promise to make today to all of the coward’s friends: Their day of reckoning is coming, and it’s coming very quickly.”

Among those sitting in silence in the horseshoe-shaped chapel were rows and rows of khaki-uniformed CHP officers, dozens of other law enforcement personnel from around Southern California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and Sheriff Lee Baca.

At the front of the peach-colored chapel were immediate family members and close friends of Steiner, who was recalled as quiet and athletic. His 3-year-old son, Bryan, wore a CHP hat. His wife was visibly consumed with grief.

They listened as Steiner’s sister, Julie Sparks, tearfully described how her brother was driven to succeed as a police officer. Steiner was a competitive athlete as a schoolboy and worked to become an accomplished marksman at the CHP academy.

“He was the type of person who could do anything if he put his mind to it,” Sparks said.

Moments later, with her voice cracking, she told the crowd to “Go home and hug the ones you love, and do it often.”

Steiner’s casket was draped with an American flag and rested in front of the altar. Throughout the service, the casket was flanked by a CHP honor guard wearing gleaming orange and blue motorcycle helmets and standing at attention.

To the right of the casket was a picture of Steiner’s white Chevy Camaro, one of the cars dubbed “polar bears” because of their color, said Capt. Sharon Baker, head of the Santa Fe Springs office where Steiner was assigned.

Steiner was said to have been elated when the CHP bought a fleet of the sleek and speedy cars for special assignments several years ago. He was one of the first on the force to receive a Camaro, Baker said.

She read a letter that was sent to the CHP last July from a woman who received a traffic ticket from Steiner. But it wasn’t a complaint. The woman wrote that Steiner was “professional, polite and respectful” and should serve as a model for all other peace officers.

“Tom was just one of those guys who did the right thing because it was the right thing to do,” Baker said.

She said Steiner, unlike other CHP veterans, went out of his way to help newcomers in the department. She also remembers the usually quiet Steiner coming into the station early each day for work, cracking open a bottle of Gatorade and chewing tobacco.

“He used the bottle to spit into. He drank the Gatorade first,” Baker said, eliciting laughter.

Steiner was the first officer out of the Santa Fe Springs station and the 201st CHP officer to die in the line of duty in the agency’s 75-year history.

“The bullets struck Officer Thomas Steiner, but they were aimed at all of us,” said Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of business, housing and transportation for the governor. “Officer Steiner paid the ultimate price, but we too are the victims of this senseless act of violence.”

After the funeral, a steady line of black-and-white cruisers and motorcycles left the chapel for Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Cypress, where Steiner was buried with honors. Riflemen fired a salute, bagpipes played and three CHP helicopters provided a flyover.

Steiner’s alleged killer, Arenas, will be arraigned May 5 at the same courthouse where the killing occurred on a sidewalk out front. He will be tried as an adult.

Helmick said CHP officers would always remember the Newhall tragedy of April 6, 1970, when four highway patrolmen were killed in a bloody shootout outside a restaurant. Now, he said, the CHP had a new date to remember -- April 21, 2004.