Deputy mourned after car crash

In the days after an Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputy was killed in a Huntington Beach car accident, colleagues remembered him as a “stand-up guy” who brought a cheerful attitude to work and devoted himself to the department’s youth program.

Terry Stepp, 44, of Wildomar died Saturday evening at UC Irvine Medical Center shortly after a one-car accident near Goldenwest Street and Pecan Avenue. His father-in-law, Huntington Beach resident David Kerr, was a passenger in the car and died at the scene.

A 20-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, Stepp started as a police officer in San Clemente before the city’s department merged with the county. Two weeks before his death, he was transferred to a beat at John Wayne Airport, sheriff’s department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

Amormino described Stepp, whose wife works as a dispatcher for the department, as an upbeat man who worked closely with the Explorer youth program.

“He was an all-around good guy,” Amormino said. “It’s really a tragedy.”

According to fellow spokesman John McDonald, Stepp received the department’s Medal of Courage in 2006 after he helped to remove hundreds of pounds of explosives from a tractor trailer in Anaheim.

“It’s a big loss,” McDonald said. “He had a lot of friends here.”

Stepp’s funeral is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today at Calvary Chapel Pacific Coast, 6400 Westminster Blvd., Westminster.