Army Spc. Agustin Gutierrez, 19, San Jacinto; killed in vehicle rollover
Growing up in Escondido and then San Jacinto, Calif., Agustin Gutierrez was so close to his twin, Jose, and their two-years-younger nephew, Elvis Mendoza, that the rest of their extended family called the boys the Three Musketeers. Inseparable and always there for one another, the three were shy around everyone else.
So it surprised the family when, shortly after graduating from San Jacinto High School in 2005, Gutierrez joined the Army. It was the first time the Three Musketeers had been separated since the twins were 8 and moved in with their oldest sister, Cecilia Mendoza, and her young family.
She didn’t want Gutierrez to go because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he told her that the Army offered him help with school and a chance to see new places. By last spring, he had completed training and joined the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
The 19-year-old Army specialist visited his family over the holidays before shipping out to Afghanistan on Jan. 22. He was cheerful and enjoying his new life, Mendoza said. Then her worst fear came true.
On March 29, Gutierrez died of injuries suffered a day earlier when the vehicle he was traveling in near Kabul overturned. Also killed in the accident was Sgt. Edmund McDonald, 25, of Casco, Maine.
A mechanic assigned to the 782nd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, Gutierrez had volunteered to be a gunner in the convoy that day. His sergeant told the family that Gutierrez was always one of the first to volunteer for extra duty.
That’s not the only thing Mendoza has since learned about her once-shy brother. In e-mails, his buddies told her that Gutierrez planned to propose to his girlfriend of nine months, Rebecca Collado of Fayetteville, N.C., whom he met at a movie theater near Ft. Bragg.
Gutierrez brought Collado to San Jacinto at Christmas, Mendoza said, but didn’t tell anyone of his plans.
“I guess he was going to surprise us, like he always did,” Mendoza said. “When he came home on leave, he’d only call one brother and tell him not to tell the rest of the family so he could surprise us.”
Collado was among those at Gutierrez’s funeral and burial April 5 at Riverside National Cemetery.
“I miss you, baby,” she wrote in a memory book on the Internet. “You were and are and will always be my only love.”
In addition to his sister and twin, Gutierrez is survived by his parents, Francisco and Elvira Gutierrez; and four older brothers, Alberto, Ricardo, Rogelio and Ruperto.
Gutierrez had planned to come home to San Jacinto in June to join his twin for their 20th birthday and to reunite the Three Musketeers.
“We’re very, very proud of him,” his sister said. “He’d gone off on his own. He was making it.”
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