Another LI soldier lost

A Call To Action

Newsday.com

BY RACHEL LEIFER
STAFF WRITER

August 18, 2005

Pfc. Jose Ruiz called his mom in Brentwood last December to tell her that a "big, big present" was on its way.

When Juliana King answered her door a few minutes later, her 28-year-old son was standing there grinning.

"Here's your present," he said, wrapping her in a hug.

But that memory's sweetness was of little comfort yesterday. Ruiz was killed Monday when he was hit by small arms fire from a civilian vehicle while conducting a security operation in Mosul, Iraq, three weeks before he was to return home to begin a tour on a U.S. Army base in Tacoma, Wash. He is the fourth Brentwood High School graduate to fall as a soldier in combat since 2003.

Yesterday, Ruiz's adoptive father remembered Ruiz as disciplined and smart, but also selfless and loving.

"He was a sweet, sweet son," said Eduardo King, who raised Ruiz since he was 2 years old. "He was my partner."

Ruiz's wife, Alexa, 28, who lives in Manhattan, had already shipped their furniture to Washington State and had taken the couple's 9-month-old daughter, Liana -- who met her father for the first and only time last Christmas -- to stay with her parents in the Washington Heights section of the city until Ruiz came home.

"He didn't want me to be alone," she said in an interview yesterday, her voice cracking. "I was going to sign our lease and get our new keys on Monday."

Ruiz was instantly enamored of his daughter, said Eduardo King. "When he first met her, it was glory," he said. "He never let her go."

The couple met in 1997 while attending the New York Institute of Technology campus in Manhattan, and married a year later. Ruiz worked as a computer network engineer at the now-defunct online convenience store Kozmo.com in Manhattan before joining the military, his father said.

The Kings had hoped their son would abandon a lifelong yen to become a soldier after he got married. But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, inspired him to serve his country, his father said, and Ruiz joined the Army in 2003.

A year later, he was sent to Iraq with the 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, which is based at Fort Lewis in Washington state.

Ruiz called home almost every day, and always seemed worried his parents were disappointed in him, Juliana King said.

"He would always say ... 'This is where I'm meant to be, Mom,'" she said. "'I know you want me behind a desk, but I need to defend my country.'"

His father said he struggled to convince Ruiz that he had overcome his initial disappointment in his choice.

"He would always ask his mom, 'Is Daddy proud of me?'" he said. "At first, I didn't want my son engaged in a profession where he might have to hurt people. But I always told him, 'You are this family's hero.'"

Ruiz's body was scheduled for return to his family last night, and funeral arrangements have yet to be finalized, his father said.

Including Ruiz, 13 soldiers from Long Island have been killed in Iraq, and five have died in Afghanistan. American casualties in Iraq reached 1,858 yesterday, while 224 have been killed in Afghanistan, according to Department of Defense statistics.

As the death toll climbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pain of individual casualties reaches beyond the homes of grieving families.

Brentwood High School teacher and former Marine corporal Chris Chamberlin said that, though he is proud of his students who join the military, the mounting death toll was increasingly painful for a school he described as intimate and personal.

"To have another one die, it's just going to keep making things harder," said Chamberlin, 38, who has taught English at Brentwood since 1996, two years after Ruiz graduated. "This year alone I helped three or four of my students join the military, and now they're in harm's way, and I put them there."

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.