Slain Deputy Praised, Laid to Rest

Those who knew him wept Wednesday as they remembered Brad Riches, a sheriff’s deputy kind enough to treat jail inmates as his “customers” but tough enough to win a medal of courage for wrestling a gun from a distraught man.

But thousands of law enforcement officers who never met him also gathered Wednesday at Saddleback Valley Community Church to lay to rest a man slain for doing what they do every day.

Many deputies cried at the Lake Forest church as giant video screens flashed a montage of photographs of the 34-year-old Orange County deputy’s life, cut short Saturday morning by a gunman who allegedly wanted to kill a cop.

At the moving funeral service, Sheriff Mike Carona paid tribute to the nine-year veteran, saying that he died because his killer “just hated cops.”

“Brad became the sacrificial lamb for all of us in law enforcement,” Carona said, his voice at times choked with emotion. “Brad took the bullets for all of us in law enforcement. Wrong time, wrong place.”

Riches was sitting in his patrol car about 1 a.m. Saturday outside a 7-Eleven when he was riddled with assault weapon fire. Moments earlier, a rifle-wielding customer told the store clerk that he carried the gun because he intended to use the weapon against police.

Within hours, deputies arrested a 39-year-old unemployed laborer, Maurice Gerard Steskal, and recovered an assault rifle that they believe was used in the attack.

At one point during Wednesday’s service, these words appeared on one of the video screens: “They Are Not Dead Who Live in the Lives They Leave Behind.” They were the words that Riches had written when he constructed the department’s memorial to five deputies slain on duty.

Riches was the sixth deputy to be killed in the department’s 110-year history, and the first while on patrol since 1958.

Calling him his “best friend,” Riches’ older brother, Robert, recalled his sibling’s determination to treat everyone with respect, including the jail inmates he guarded and called “customers.” Robert Riches said he was with his brother a couple of times when they bumped into some of the people Brad Riches once kept watch over.

“These inmates used to greet Brad with a handshake and a smile,” he said.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Glen Kruen, recalled Riches’ life. Born in Quebec, Canada, Riches moved to Orange County when he was 6 months old because his father’s job as an oil company engineer brought them south.

As work took the Riches family around the world, the young Brad grew up traveling--to Singapore, Indonesia and Holland. Such an upbringing nurtured within the boy an adventurous spirit, something that would stay with him into adulthood.

“He had an insatiable appetite to travel,” said Deputy Tim Cullen, who worked alongside Riches in the jails when they started as deputies in 1990.

“We were in chow hall [in the jail] together when things went bad,” Cullen said. “We were in the briefing room together when things got funny. It’s like a part of you dying.”

The family eventually moved back to Orange County, where Riches graduated from Dana Hills High School in 1984. The young man served as a part-time firefighter and emergency medical technician.

After becoming a U.S. citizen so that he could join a police department, Riches was appointed a special officer with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in 1989.

A year later, he was awarded the Medal of Courage after wrestling a gun away from a distraught welfare recipient at a county office. The next year, he was hired as a deputy.

After the funeral service, hundreds of black and white patrol cars formed a glittering trail along Lake Forest streets as Riches’ casket made the short journey to El Toro Memorial Park for burial.

Following requests from the family, deputies did not give the casket a gun salute. But just before the coffin was lowered, seven sheriff’s helicopters flew overhead in V-formation.