Marine killed in Iraq remembered as team player at high school

By CHELSEA J. CARTER
Associated Press Writer

COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) He wasn't a star athlete or standout student. By all accounts, Jose A. Garibay just enjoyed being part of the team.

The 21-year-old Marine corporal, who was killed near An Nasiriyah, Iraq over the weekend, played football until his junior year at Newport Harbor High School.

``He wasn't a starter. But he was one of those kids who was happy to be on the team,'' Mike Bargas, assistant football coach, said Tuesday. ``A lot of kids don't realize just being part of something means a lot. He did.''

That's why Garibay made a good Marine, educators said, and planned to become a police officer when his enlistment was completed next year.

The resident of Orange was killed March 23 after encountering Iraqi troops. Seven other Marines, including Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, 20, of Lomita, were killed.

Garibay was a native of Jalisco, Mexico who moved to the United States when he was a baby. His mother, Simona Garibay, learned of his death at 7 a.m. Monday, when two Marines came to her house. She asked if her son, known as ``Angel'' to the family, was wounded. They said he was dead.

``I want the war to stop, the war that took the life of my son,'' she said Tuesday in Spanish through a translator. ``I would like the troops to come and tell the president it is done.''

A number of American and Mexican flags flew outside the single-story family home. A large portrait of Garibay in uniform was also on display.

Simona Garibay, 51, said she didn't like the idea of her son becoming a Marine but had always let him and her other children make their own choices.

``It's such a deep pain I am feeling,'' she said. ``'Nobody can imagine what a mother suffers.''

Lucina Aguilar, 24, said her cousin had recently received his green card and wanted to become a citizen.

``I want to think they found the wrong dog tag, they found the wrong Angel,'' Aguilar said. ``But I know it is him.''

The family received a visit Tuesday from Mexican consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro Amieba, who handed a letter of condolence to Simona Garibay as she clutched a rosary. The mother asked for help reuniting the family by bringing her two sons and their grandfather to this country from Mexico.

Jose Garibay joined the Marines three years ago and was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Janis Toman, a resource specialist at Newport Harbor High School, knew him from her tutorial program, which Garibay had attended in his freshman and sophomore years. He served as her student aid during the last half of his senior year.

She remembered Garibay as respectful and appreciative, with a sense of humor that included plays on words. She had received two letters since he was deployed to the Middle East, including one on Monday just hours before learning he had been killed.

She was putting together a care package of cookies and candy when she got the call.

``I just cried,'' she said. ``It felt like a punch in the stomach. He's one of the kids I feel I made a difference in his life. He's one of the reasons you want to teach.''

Garibay stayed in touch with teachers and coaches at the school, likely because they served as a surrogate family, Toman said. In the letter she got Monday, he talked about daily life in Kuwait before the war and how much he missed the things he had taken for granted.

``He said he had steak, potatoes and Pepsi for dinner, and he said how much that meant to him,'' she said.

When Garibay was a freshman, he was drifting and didn't know what he wanted to do, Toman said. By his junior year, he had started talking abut joining the Marines.

``I think he believed in our country and wanted to defend it,'' she said.

Garibay often visited the school and stopped by before being deployed.

``Every time he came by, he came in his full uniform to show it off. He was very proud of it,'' Bargas said.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)