Air Force Tech. Sgt. James R. Hornbarger, 33, Marysville; dies after heart attack
James Robert Hornbarger’s high school counselor hated to break the news to him, but when she saw the misspelled word tattooed across his back, she felt he needed to know. “Angle,” she said.
The hand-sized tattoo was meant to refer to Hornbarger’s nickname, Angel — unlikely though that sometimes seemed for the free-spirited young man from the small town of Elko, Nev.
“He was so excited to show me his new tattoo,” Maribeth Cassinelli recalled, laughing. “When I told him ... oh, he was devastated.”
Hornbarger, who went by J.R., tended to do exactly as he thought best — including, for a time, spending nights in his car at the bottom of a hill near the school grounds, said Cassinelli, then a guidance counselor at Elko High School.
Cassinelli said she would wake him for class in the morning. She still remembers him, 15 years after he graduated, as a charismatic, easygoing student.
“Everybody knew J.R.... There are some kids that stay in your mind,” said Cassinelli, who has counseled students for more than two decades.
Hornbarger joined the Air Force in 1996, a year after he graduated from Elko High. He was assigned to the 9th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, north of Sacramento.
Tech. Sgt. James R. Hornbarger, 33, of Marysville died Sept. 12 as the result of illness related to a heart attack while he was stationed on the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, where he was serving in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Shaun Dominguez remembered Hornbarger as a boy, pulling tricks on his skateboard in the concrete basins of an empty trailer park outside Dominguez’s home.
“He wasn’t scared of anything,” Dominguez, 28, recalled of the few years when his father and Hornbarger’s mother dated. “I always looked up to him.... Fearless would be a good word.”
In the Air Force, Hornbarger was serving as an avionics technician both at home and abroad, from Britain to South Korea.
His stepmother, Helen Hornbarger of Elko, said J.R. was a good father and a good husband. He loved the outdoors, enjoying snowboarding, camping, hiking and fishing.
As a child, Hornbarger liked to sing and make up his own words for things, his stepmother said.
“He would always make us laugh with his funny sayings and funny made-up words,” she said. “He was always kind to everyone, and loved his family very much.”
She also said that when he played Little League baseball as a boy, he often ran the bases looking back over his shoulder. When his father asked him why, he said he wanted to see the dust he was kicking up because he was running so fast.
Hornbarger’s wife, Tara, who is also in the military, declined to comment for this article.
In addition to his wife and stepmother, Hornbarger’s survivors include a daughter, Asia; his father, Jack Hornbarger; his mother, Linda Raab; his stepfather, Richard Raab; a brother, Tony Bleak; and two sisters, Julie Brown and Michelle Strozzi.
