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Palomar Mtn. Memorial Honors Fireman

A monument reminiscent of a New Mexico Native American pueblo sits in an unlikely spot on Palomar Mountain because of a series of events one year ago.

That was when Gregory Pacheco, a member of a U.S. Forest Service fire crew from the Picuris Pueblo in New Mexico, came to the area to fight the 7,800-acre Palomar Mountain fire.

That in itself was nothing notable. Such crews typically travel the West during the fire season. But as Pacheco was working on the line Sept. 30, 1999, he was struck on the head by a boulder described in news accounts as “the size of a tire.” Pacheco died of his injuries Oct. 5.

“Gregory was a 20-year-old kid,” said Bobbin Kraeger, co-owner of A Graphic Edge sign company in Escondido, who read about the event in a newspaper and decided she had to help in the effort to build a memorial to Pacheco.

“Something just moved me about it. He was so young and died a hero. I have a 25-year-old, and I thought about how I’d feel if I lost my child in a fire, about my child dying a hero,” Kraeger said.

Others were working on the memorial as well. Kraeger contacted Karl Bauer, chief of the Palomar Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, and offered to donate design services for the memorial as well as a bronze plaque. She estimated the donation saved the fire department and the Southern California Indian Natural Resources Consortium about $600 on the project.

The monument was unveiled Aug. 26 at the 9.5-mile marker on Palomar Mountain’s East Grade Road.

“We were strangers to him,” said Pete Kraeger, co-owner of A Graphic Edge, “but the young man lost his life for that community. He is a hero to all of us.”

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