Marine was an ‘absolute joy’

Friends and former co-workers this week mourned Daniel J. Santee, a Marine Corps lance corporal and a former Costa Mesa Fire intern who died in Iraq.

Santee, 21, of Mission Viejo, was killed in a vehicle accident on Saturday.

He worked as a fire prevention intern during 2005 and 2006 until he joined the Marines. His father, Bert Santee, is a retired sergeant with the Costa Mesa Police Department, and Daniel’s sister, Laura Santee, works for the department as a training secretary.

Fire Department colleagues remembered Daniel Santee as someone who always had a good attitude and wanted to help out any way he could. He was “an absolute joy, never didn’t have a smile on his face, and [was] always willing to do anything that anybody asked, whether it was loading the van or washing the cars or getting the fuel,” said Costa Mesa fire prevention specialist Brenda Emrick.

Santa Ana Fire Department inspector Kristie Hiatt knew Daniel from Santa Ana College, where they studied fire protection, and she worked with him as an intern in Costa Mesa.

“My nickname for Dan was Jiminy Cricket because he was so spry and full of energy, and he was always asking what else he could do,” Hiatt said. “He always had an infectious smile, and his eyes were always twinkling. He had so much energy — he wore me out.”

Santee debated enlisting in the Marines for a while but finally decided it was something he needed to do, Hiatt said. Once he made the decision, he wrote the Fire Department chief a letter “saying he was resigning and that he was going to become part of a different team and he’d always remember the fire service,” Emrick said. “He really wanted everyone to know that he’d be thinking of us as much as we were thinking of him.”

Emrick said Santee’s Fire Department friends sent him a care package that he received last week. They learned on Saturday that he’d been killed.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, he died in a nonhostile vehicle accident in Al Anbar province. He was in a combat regiment based in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Efforts to reach Santee’s family were unsuccessful. The Costa Mesa City Council adjourned its Tuesday meeting in his memory.