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...was no bad news from Iraq, where his 20-year-old son, Marine Corps corporal Christopher Leon, was serving in Ramadi, one of the country's most violent cities. During the four months since Chris deployed, this had become Jim's ritual. Because his job as lab technician at Quest Diagnostics in Tarzana required him to be at work by 6:30 a.m., he always arrived home early. If anything was wrong, he would at least find out before his wife, Kathi, who kept normal business hours in the billing office of an Antelope Valley urologist.
Like so many streets in Lancaster, Avenue K-9, where the Leons live, is a link in a vast grid of alphabetized avenues running east to west and numbered thoroughfares laid out north to south. An unincorporated desert community just 30 years ago, Lancaster now has a population of 130,000 and sprawls across the top of Los Angeles County. From its chain restaurants to its proliferating subdivisions, it exudes newness and uniformity. The big residential developers are KB, Beazer, Pulte, and Heritage, and the interchangeable versions of paradise they've created are advertised on fluttering banners proclaiming 7 FLOOR PLANS, YOU'LL LOVE IT HERE, or NO PAYMENTS UNTIL 2008. The Leons own a three-bedroom house in Harris Homes, one of the earlier neighborhoods on the desirable west side. The living room, all green and white with a faceted mirror over the fireplace, is dominated by a fabric-and-rope tree for their five cats. A Sony big-screen TV fronts one wall of the den. Plates adorned by Norman Rockwell paintings are mounted to another. But photographs of Chris are the interior's most distinctive element. A shot of him as a towheaded three-month-old hangs near his parents' bed. Pictures of him on a recent Easter and on his prom night top the mantelpiece. The first thing visible on entering the front door is a formal portrait of him in his Marine Corps dress blues. Blond haired and hazel eyed with a square jaw, he radiates self-assurance.
The Leons adopted Chris at birth, making him not less than flesh and blood to them but something more. At the time, they'd been together 12 years and were living in a tiny condo in Agoura. Tall with a thin gray mustache, Jim, who moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest in the 1960s, is urbane, deliberate, and at 72, his wife's elder by 16 years. Dark haired and exuberant, Kathi grew up in the North Valley, and most of her family still lives in the area. Each went through troubled early marriages, and both are deeply religious, regarding faith as a bulwark against an uncertain world. Indeed, Jim--who was raised Jewish--converted to Catholicism shortly after marrying Kathi. For a long time they saw themselves as liberals, but eventually they drifted to the right. Not that they were doctrinaire about it. They opposed abortion and felt that the Republican Party offered the best hope for a culture that fostered life. Jim, who's estranged from a son and daughter by his first wife, especially wanted a child, and he and Kathi tried hard to have one, invoking the Lord--they prayed constantly--and science. Despite side effects that made her hands ache so badly she had to bandage them, Kathi took the fertility drug Danazol. Nothing worked. Then in the fall of 1985, Kathi's obstetrician phoned with wonderful news. A 13-year-old patient named Nikki Ruhl was putting her child up for adoption. Were they interested? On November 5, the day Nikki gave birth, Jim and Kathi were at Thousand Oaks' Los Robles Hospital. After the papers were signed and Nikki was granted a few hours to hold her son, the couple took the infant home. They called him Christopher David, but Baby, Kathi's pet name for him--which even after he joined the Marines she continued to use--emphasized his status in their family as a fragile and precious gift. "It was such a God thing," she says. "He gave us this blessing. You think you're in control, but God is."
Jim and Kathi moved to Lancaster in 1988 because it was a part of Los Angeles where they could afford a new house with a big yard. It took time for Jim to adjust to the one-hour commute to and from work in Tarzana, but soon enough the two were using the same expression used by others in the Antelope Valley for the more urban Southern California they'd left behind: Down Below. Down Below was crime and congestion. But here, especially in Harris Homes, which had materialized overnight, was a community of like-minded people seeking something better. In its orderliness, Lancaster offered a place of greater safety.
For Jim and Kathi, Chris's childhood was a happy blur. They ferried him to T-ball games, bought him Star Wars toys and skateboards, and enrolled him in one of the Antelope Valley's most elite elementary schools, Desert Christian. Chris and his best friend since second grade, David Meade, played on various roller hockey teams--the Sabres, the Hawks, and the Rangers--at an indoor rink. The only trouble anyone remembered Chris getting into as a boy occurred at the age of seven or eight when he and David set some sagebrush at the end of Avenue K-9 on fire while fooling with matches. They tried to put out the flames with Super Soakers, hut when that failed they did the right thing, telling Kathi, who called the fire department, which extinguished the blaze.
Since Chris departed for Iraq, Jim and Kathi had thought back often on those days. They'd also thought back on more recent, harder times. Like many young marines, Chris had gone through a period in his teens when he'd behaved heedlessly. He had nearly destroyed himself with alcohol and drugs. There was a long stretch during which Jim and Kathi despaired of ever reaching him. But Chris fought his way clear, the battle largely taking place in his room. Painted electric blue, it is plastered with posters of Eminem and 50 Cent. A hockey stick autographed by the Kings looks down from one side, a row of Dodger caps from another. Here Chris sought meaning in his life and forgiveness for his trespasses, at 18 scrawling a plea for divine intervention on the closet wall with a Magic Marker:
I feel like I serve no purpose Strivin ta succeed but always Fallin ta my knees, Please God please Let my thoughts guide me Light my path Don't hide me I'll change the world you provided me.
Jim and Kathi were thankful the Marine Corps had given their son a sense of purpose, but they were terrified because it had placed him in danger. Jim was particularly fearful, as he viewed the world so differently from his son. Where Chris was vigorous and confrontational, he was bookish and reserved. He spent his days in a lab coat performing repetitive tasks with names like "enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay." Neither had much patience for the other's interests. The gap had been the source of much tension during Chris's adolescence, but they had gotten through it.
All of this was in the back of Jim's mind on Tuesday, June 20, 2006, when he saw the Father's Day card from Iraq. Greetings for specific occasions are hard to come by in Ramadi. Chris was forced to select one that read "Happy Birthday Dad" and displayed a lighthouse. Inside, he'd written a note that from its spotty spelling to its assessment of past failings was a synopsis of his life:
Sorry they didn't have any fathers day cards. I know the light house is really gay. I hope you know how thankful I am for having a great man and father in my life. You've done more than youre share of hard work raising me and I know it wasn't easy. Now I'm all grown up and reflecting youre teachings and dissapline on the world. You've made me into a man and I thank you with all my heart for youre sacrifices and determination. Thanks for never giving up on me even threw all the shame I brought upon myself. Thank you for all you've done for me. I couldn't ask for a better father. Happy fathers day. I love you dad. Love, Chris
Jim's eyes filled with tears. Chris had never told him that he looked up to him or regarded him as a source of strength. Maybe he had been a better father than he imagined. Maybe their life in the Antelope Valley had worked out according to plan. When he finally composed himself, Jim called Kathi to tell her everything was okay and that he'd received an amazing card from their son that he couldn't wait for her to read. Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang.
ONE DAY DURING his sophomore year, Chris was standing on the grounds of Lancaster's Paraclete High handing out sticks of gum to some friends when a classmate approached and demanded a piece. Chris refused, and the boy grabbed him by the hair. Chris retaliated with a vicious punch to the mouth. He mostly ended up hurting himself, though, opening a jagged gash across his knuckles. The cut became infected, and the next morning he awakened with a hand as big as a balloon. He missed half a week of classes, but the worst thing was that he didn't care. In fact, he took pride in the entire episode, regarding it as a defining moment.
Paraclete High is on the northwest side of Lancaster, just below Quartz Hill, the area's wealthiest enclave, home to physicians, lawyers, and aerospace engineers employed by the giant Boeing and Northrop Grumman factories that dominate the Antelope Valley's economy. Although affiliated with the Catholic Church, the school draws students of all religions to its yucca-studded campus. Ninety percent of the graduates attend college, and as a freshman Chris had given every indication that he would be one of them, earning mostly As and Bs. The next year had begun just as promisingly, with Chris playing cornerback on the varsity football Spirits, getting into enough games to feel that he contributed to the team's 2001 California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section Championship.
Then the bottom fell out. In his second sophomore semester, Chris received a C in English, Ds in French, biology, and religion, and an F in algebra. Never again would he walk onto the football field. His new sport was paintball, which had him running through the desert blasting away with a $1,300 Angel gun his parents dutifully helped him buy. He'd taken up drinking and smoking, choosing brands--potent King Cobra 40s and nicotine-rich Camel Wides--that he believed gave him gangster credibility. Many weekend nights he stayed out until dawn without calling home. He also started stealing money from Jim and Kathi, even taking Christmas presents intended for his grandparents, returning them to the store where they were purchased, and pocketing the refund.
Jim and Kathi racked their brains to understand what was going on. How could their baby have so quickly become a demon? What had they missed? There had, of course, been signs. When Chris was at Desert Christian, he'd been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and his doctor had prescribed Ritalin, then Dexedrine. During his teens, though, he stopped taking the drugs. They made him feel dull. Without them, he was prone to rogue bursts of energy. There was also something else: By...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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