Community Corner

A Fallen Soldier Returns

Army Spc. Christopher Fishbeck was honored Friday with a Hero Mission as his body comes home.

Army Spc. Christopher Fishbeck, 24 came home from Iraq to his family Friday. His coffin was flown to the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training base and honored in a solemn Hero Mission ceremony designed to pay tribute to the ultimate sacrifice that he and his family made.

The 24-year-old sharpshooter from Buena Park was killed in Baghdad this month when enemy forces attacked his unit, authorities said.

As the plane landed Friday, a hush fell over the crowd of about 200 people lined up on the runway. When his flag-draped coffin was carried across the runway, dozens of supporters raised American flags into the air, breaking the silence with the sounds of flags whipping in the wind.

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Fishbeck is survived by his wife of three months, Stephanie Kidder, his father, Gary Fishbeck, his mother, Toni Kay, and sisters Rene Gutel of Paris and Randi Jean Fishbeck of Anaheim.

Friends and family remembered Fishbeck, a former wrestler and football player at Kennedy High School in La Palma, as a playful and mischievous young man as well as a solemn soldier, who studied missile trajectories, worked in intelligence and knew the dangers he faced in Iraq.

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This week, his mother shared her feelings about her son’s death.

“I saw Christopher two weeks ago,” Kay said at a press conference on Tuesday. “He was home on leave and he took me aside and he told me that there was a 90 percent chance that he would not make it our of Iraq alive because there was increasing fire coming onto the base where he was stationed. I was somewhat mentally prepared, but I think any mother that sends a son off to war, you have to make peace with that possibility that he may lose his life.

“Today we family members and friends are inconsolable. It is my prayer as a mother that if peace ever finds Iraq, then those inconsolable tears will be replaced with the knowledge that my son had a hand in making the world a place of peace.”

Fishbeck was killed along with four other soldiers in an attack on his unit. The others were Spc. Emilio J. Campo Jr., 20, of Madelia, Minn.; Spc. Michael B. Cook Jr., 27, of Middletown, Ohio; Spc. Robert P. Hartwick, 20, of Rockbridge, Ohio; and Pfc. Michael C. Olivieri, 26, of Chicago.

The public is invited to his memorial service at 11 a.m. Monday at St. Irenaeus Catholic Church, 5201 Evergreen Ave., in Cypress.


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