FAREWELL TO A FIREFIGHTER
CDF CREW MEMBER HONORED BY 4,000 AT MEMORIAL SERVICE

BY JOEL HOOD, BEE STAFF WRITER, Modesto Bee
Tuesday
9/21/04

ANGELS CAMP

Eva Schicke's remains were flown home Monday, amid a chorus of bagpipes and to the salute of 2,000 solemn firefighters in formal black and blue dress.

It had been a day of somber celebration for Schicke, the 23-year-old Turlock-born firefighter who was killed Sept. 12 battling a wildfire east of Groveland in southern Tuolumne County.

The first woman in the history of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to die in action, Schicke was remembered by family and friends during a touching, three-hour public ceremony that attracted close to 4,000 people to the Calaveras County Fairgrounds. 

It ended with members of the Columbia Helitack crew, Schicke's co-workers since June, loading her coffin aboard the department helicopter for the short flight back to Columbia.

Her family will take her remains from there to their home in Placerville. Services will be private.

Among the speakers at the Angels Camp ceremony Monday was Schicke's fiancé, Shea Buhler, who recalled a kind-hearted woman who also was fiercely competitive. Tenacity, he said, drove Schicke as a firefighter and contributed to her being chosen to the elite 12-person Helitack crew just four years after she joined CDF.

Buhler said that spark also drove her in basketball, a sport she excelled in for four years at California State University, Stanislaus.
"She was very competitive with everything in life," said Buhler, an engineer for the Ebbetts Pass Fire Protection District, near where Schicke lived in Arnold. "Eva will be missed, not only by me, her brother, John (Schicke), and her mother (Joyce Schicke), but by everyone here today."

TENDER, TALENTED, COMPETITIVE

John Schicke remembered a rambunctious little sister who liked to pull the heads off her Barbie dolls and loved challenging him in athletic contests. But he also told of her softer side, that often led her to comfort friends and give advice that seemed well beyond her age.

"She can charm you with her smile and bless you with her words," John Schicke said, his speech drifting into present tense. "I love my sister so much."

Joyce Schicke again asked not to be interviewed by the media and did not speak at the service. Instead, the ceremony included a taped recording of a duet with Eva and her mom singing a gospel tune from the funeral for Eva's father, who died of cancer in 1998.

"Eva loved music and she was so very talented," said CDF Chaplain Jay Donnelley, who led the service.

Eva Schicke was born in Turlock in 1980 and moved to Placerville with her family in 1988. She was a two-sport standout in basketball and volleyball at Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs before returning to Turlock in 1998 to attend Stanislaus State. She graduated in 2002 with a degree in criminal justice.

A NATURAL FIREFIGHTER

But she was a natural firefighter, said Tuolumne-Calaveras Battalion Chief Jeff Millar, who recruited Schicke to CDF and whose wife, LeAnn, recruited her to the women's basketball program at Stanislaus State. "Eva was a wonderful person who touched a lot of people in her short life," Jeff Millar said.

Nick Triveri, a pastor at Cal-vary Chapel in Placerville, recalled a woman of enduring faith, one who had underlined passages in her personal Bible and had written notes to herself in the margins. One such note, read Monday, simply said: "Everything you go through has a happy ending ... eternity."

A LAST TRIP THROUGH MOUNTAINS

The memorial began at 10 a.m. Monday with a ceremonial passing of Schicke's cremated remains from the custody of the U.S. Forest Service to CDF at Terzich & Wilson Funeral Home in Sonora. From there, a procession of more than 100 fire vehicles carried Schicke's flag-draped coffin on a four-hour tour through Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, snaking through the towns of Sonora, Columbia, Murphys and Angels Camp.

Along the way, bystanders waved from sides of roads, and some held American flags. A sign on the north side of the Parrotts Ferry Bridge read: "Thank You Eva." Another in front of an Angels Camp thrift store read: "God Bless Our Firefighters."

As the procession, which increased to about 200 vehicles in Angels Camp, approached the entrance to the fairgrounds, two dozen students from Colleen Hancock's fourth-grade class at nearby Christian Family School waved flags behind a chain-link fence.

"So many of these kids' parents are firefighters," Hancock said. "We're here today to pay our respects, but also to honor all of those who serve."

Bee staff writer Joel Hood can be reached at 238-4574 or jhood@modbee.com.