Saguaro High mourns senior at candlelight vigil

Joseph DeBolske’s friends at Saguaro High School knew the Scottsdale senior was eager to celebrate his 18th birthday skiing on a Colorado mountainside.

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They said he had been looking forward to spending time with his dad, Kevin, at the end of winter break.

But when school resumed classes on Monday, DeBolske wasn’t there.

The announcement explaining why came the next day: DeBolske was one of nine Arizonans killed Sunday night in a horrific bus crash along a southeastern Utah highway. At least 20 others were injured.

“He was an amazing kid,” said his aunt, Theresa Talbert. “We’re going to miss him so much. He just had an amazing heart. He always wanted to give to people.”

Of the dead, eight were from the Valley and two, including DeBolske, lived in the East Valley. The other victim was Gilbert resident Jeffrey Rivera, 32.

The bus, returning from a ski trip in Colorado’s Telluride resort, skidded off a wet road, tumbled more than 40 feet down an embankment and then came to rest on its wheels but with the roof sheared away.

Kevin DeBolske remains hospitalized in Utah in serious condition, Talbert said. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had not been informed of his son’s death.

DeBolske’s close-knit family has spent their time together, supporting Joseph’s mother and three younger siblings, since learning about the crash Sunday night.

Schoolmates held a candlelight vigil for the high school senior Tuesday night after Saguaro’s basketball game against rival Chaparral High School.

Brandee Nemire, a Saguaro senior who helped plan the vigil, said the school was taking DeBolske’s death hard. Several of his closest friends got the news Monday night and didn’t come to school Tuesday, she said. And she could see the shock on people’s faces after a vice principal reported DeBolske’s death on the announcements Tuesday morning.

“My class was silent for five minutes after that,” Nemire said. “No one knew what to say. You could just hear sobbing.”

DeBolske was planning to pursue a business degree after high school, Talbert said, and had looked at schools in Colorado just a few weeks earlier.

Nemire said she expected it to be a tough week. She had been excited to start the last semester of high school, forming the last memories of her school years as she and her friends prepared for college and life after graduation.

“Joe will never get that,” Nemire said. ”And he deserved it.”

Several friends of the DeBolskes went on the Telluride trip, including Rivera.

Rivera and his mother, Celia Edwards, had spoken just an hour before the crash, their discussion mundane but now forever memorable: She needed help programming her iPod.

Rivera was a computer engineer at ACS Inc., a technology company with a branch in the Valley.

“He always teased me because he said I wasn’t the brightest with technology stuff,” Edwards said. “But I never could have imagined that it was the last time I’d talk with my son.”

Edwards learned of the crash early Monday. Desperate to know if her son survived, she called Utah authorities and hospitals.

At that time, they told her he had survived.

But Edwards knew something was wrong. She had made several calls to her son, but none was returned.

At 4 p.m. Monday, the phone rang. It was a Utah highway patrolman.

“I just screamed, 'No, no,’ ” Edwards said Tuesday. “You never think you’ll outlive your children.”

As the survivors pick up the wreckage of shattered lives, investigators who have pored over the snow-covered wreckage are seeking answers.

“The two main factors we’re looking at are driver error and speed,” said Sgt. Ted Tingey of the Utah Highway Patrol. “We don’t believe weather played much of a factor.”

The driver, part-time Apache Junction resident Welland Lotan, 71, suffered minor injuries.

Lotan, also a resident of Gladwin, Mich., has a clean driving record there and is licensed to operate commercial vehicles, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office.

The company that owned the bus, Arrow Stage Lines, has a satisfactory safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates large trucks and buses.

According to the agency, since January 2006 the carrier had three injury crashes but no fatal crashes.

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The Associated Press and Tribune writers Mike Branom and Gary Grado contributed to this report.