Army Spc. Astor A. Sunsin-Pineda, 20, Long Beach; killed by a roadside bomb

A week after her son was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Lesby De Paz received his Mother’s Day card in the mail.

“I want to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve given me,” Army Spc. Astor Anibal Sunsin-Pineda, 20, had written in Spanish two days before his death.

“I send you this card -- simple, but with lots of love. I would like to be with you on this special day. God bless you.”

Now, his mother says, he is with her forever.

“He was a good son,” she said recently as family members and friends gathered to pay their respects at the flag-adorned Long Beach house she shares with her husband and three other sons.

“He was a happy guy, and that’s how I want to remember him,” she said. “He always tried to make people laugh, always tried to help them. I am very proud.”

Sunsin-Pineda was trying to help someone May 2 when he volunteered to take another man’s post on what should have been his day off. The truck he was driving struck a roadside bomb, killing him and another soldier.

A combat engineer, Sunsin-Pineda was assigned to the 4th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kan.

“I still think it’s a dream,” said Julio De Paz, the stepfather who raised Astor for most of his life. “I wake up in the morning and expect to see my son next to me. He just wanted to serve his country.”

It was a desire born of an immigrant’s experience. Born March 7, 1987, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Sunsin-Pineda arrived in the U.S. at age 8, embracing his adopted country with both arms outstretched.

“He was very proud of the United States,” his stepfather said. “His first day here he said he wanted to be in the Army.”

Inspired by an uncle who had served in the Honduran military, Astor played mostly with Army toys. He also loved soccer, performing admirably with several Orange County teams. And later he took an interest in cars, working weekends at his stepfather’s auto repair shop in Long Beach.

“He was a good muffler man,” Julio De Paz said. “He knew how to weld and balance tires. He could drive from the time he was 7.”

But the dream of becoming a soldier never strayed far. Concerned for his safety, Sunsin-Pineda’s family tried to dissuade him from a military career, even offering a new car, apartment and modest weekly salary just to keep their boy home.

But, Julio De Paz said, he was “very driven, very motivated. He prayed and we prayed, and we got confirmation from God.”

Immediately after graduating from Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach in 2005, Sunsin-Pineda, whose ultimate goal was to become a police officer, enlisted in the Army.

His positive attitude prompted military officials to select him from among thousands of Spanish-speaking soldiers to be featured in a recruiting video shown on Spanish-language TV stations nationwide.

And when he embarked for Iraq in the first week of February, his stepfather recalled, “he was very excited. He said, ‘Don’t worry; if something happens to me, I will be with God. If I die, it will be doing something I want to do.’ ”

From overseas, the young soldier called home twice a day, once in the morning and once before bed. A born-again Christian, he carried a Bible with him at all times, often preaching to fellow soldiers in the field. And he shared other things with them as well: toothpaste, cookies, beef jerky and, occasionally, extra missions, as on the day he died.

In one of his last phone calls, Sunsin-Pineda’s stepfather recalled, the young man asked his aunt to “give her soul to the Lord.” Then the calls stopped. By the time two uniformed messengers arrived at their door, Julio De Paz said, “they didn’t have to say a word; we already knew.”

He paused when asked how he’d like his son to be remembered. “He tried to make a difference,” Julio De Paz finally said. “His body is gone, but his spirit is alive.”

In addition to his mother and stepfather, Sunsin-Pineda is survived by brothers Alexi De Paz, 21; Cesar De Paz, 9; and J.C. De Paz, 7.

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david.haldane@latimes.com