300 Attend Services for Copter Victim

Family and friends and a Costa Mesa police honor guard filled the Mormon church in Tustin on Monday morning during memorial services for Jeffrey Allan Pollard, the 27-year-old flight instructor who was aboard the Costa Mesa Police Department helicopter last Tuesday and who died when it crashed.

About 300 mourners saw Pollard’s casket carried into the church behind an honor guard that included not only uniformed Costa Mesa police officers but Chief of Police David Snowden and City Manager Allan Roeder.

Widow, Fiancee of Officers

In the audience were the widow and the fiancee of the two Costa Mesa police officers who also died in the crash. Their helicopter collided with another from the Newport Beach Police Department during a pursuit of a suspected car thief. Funeral services for the officers were conducted Friday.

Beside Pollard’s casket was a floral arrangement in the shape of an airliner, a reminder of Pollard’s love of flying. Family members said that since childhood he had worked toward becoming an airline pilot and had been nearing his goal when he died taking the helicopter ride, the first he had ever taken, his family said. A friend had arranged the ride simply for fun, they said.

Pollard’s wife, Becky, and their 21-month-old daughter Christy greeted tearful mourners as they filed into the church.

But the service took on a happier tone as Robert J. Smith, one of Pollard’s boyhood friends, told mourners of Pollard’s life growing up in Burbank.

Smith described Pollard as a devoted Mormon who as a teen-ager spent two years of missionary service in North Carolina. He quoted from one of Pollard’s letters of that time: “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever work this hard again.” Yet Pollard wrote that the toil made him happy, Smith said.

“Never did he waiver from his convictions . . . a sweet spirit, a love of family,” said Smith.

Smith prompted chuckles from the audience with stories of how Pollard sent a letter to his future wife before their first date and included several vitamin pills to ensure that she did not fall ill; of how Pollard planned his visits to the Smith household so that he arrived just in time to share breakfast; of how the two boys would cruise Burbank “looking to get into mischief” and would wind up throwing water balloons at couples parked on lovers’ lanes. “That’s about the most mischief we could get into,” Smith said.

Reading of Poem

Lynn Van Buskirk, a family friend, read Pollard’s favorite poem, “High Flight.” Another friend, Bob Jensen, described Pollard as someone “who really liked people . . . a genuine nice guy.”

Jeffrey R. Loveland, Pollard’s brother-in-law, prayed for comfort “for all of us who mourn.”

Pollard was buried Monday afternoon at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, after a brief graveside ceremony.