
HEMET, Calif. — In the national news, he was one of three soldiers killed Jan. 24 at an Iraqi checkpoint outside Baghdad when a car bomb exploded. But to the folks in his hometown, Army Spc. Jason Chappell will always be the quiet kid who loved church, his family, and games like Monopoly and Clue.
As word of his death spread through this Riverside County city, teachers, friends and relatives remembered him as quiet and scholarly but also as a person who would throw himself completely into whatever he was doing.
“He was so determined in everything he did,” said Jennifer Mallon, who was on the school’s Academic Decathlon team with Chappell and appeared in the...