Thank you Mark for allowing me to post your article on our web site. Valerie Heath
Redondo Beach News
by Mark McDermott
Last Wednesday evening, Randy Stacy was working on the Redondo Beach Citizen’s
Emergency Response Team alumni website. He’d just been elected president of
the organization the night before, and he was bursting with ideas for the future
of the CERT program in his beloved hometown.
His daughter Melissa looked in on him as he was working. She suggested he get
some rest. “You look worn down,” she said.
“You know what?” he responded. “I love what I’m doing, and nobody lives forever.”
The next morning, Stacy suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 49 years old.
Friends remembered Stacy as a man besotted with his hometown and thoroughly
devoted to his loved ones, mutual passions that led to his involvement in the
CERT program, a volunteer organization whose members receive training from the
fire department to organize the community during large-scale emergencies.
He was also remembered for the many roles he played in life: as a skilled mechanic,
a community leader, a Harley rider, an avid fisherman, a sometimes musician,
a proud father and a beaming grandfather.
Mike Grady, who worked for nearly two decades with Stacy as a fellow mechanic
at the Independent Repair shop and is also a CERT member, recalled how pleased
his friend had been last week after being elected president of the CERT alumni
group. He said that it was as happy as he’d ever seen Stacy.
“After 40-some odd years, he saw the opportunity to do something for the community
he loved, and he went after it 110 percent,” Grady said.
“He wasn’t a braggart, but you could tell inside he was screaming, ‘Yes! I’m
president,’” said Valerie Heath, a CERT member who worked closely with Stacy.
“He was gleaming. It was a great moment.”
Grady said Stacy spent all day Wednesday making plans for how to improve the
CERT organization.
Stacy began his involvement with the group when he was enlisted to help design
its website five years ago. He was self-taught on the computer, but the site
he designed, www.rbcertaa.org, eventually was recognized by the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security for its effectiveness in helping Redondo’s CERT program
become a national model. Stacy was often contacted by other cities for help
organizing their own CERT websites.
“We are going to have very large shoes to fill,” said Chief Bob Engler of the
Redondo Beach Fire Department. “He was very passionate about CERT, but also
about other things in the community. The last thing I did with him was the [Relay
for Life] cancer walk. He was always someone who, if you asked him to be there,
he’d be there.”
Stacy had recently become engaged to Julie Treher, a teacher in Lawndale who
he had known as a customer at the auto shop for 18 years. Their relationship
blossomed into a romance in January, and they planned to marry next summer.
“I said, ‘God, you finally gave me a good man,’” Treher recalled.
Treher said that Stacy was a man who had “a lot of sides to him.” He knew physics,
she said, “Like the back of your hand,” and loved to sing – he often crooned
old Doors songs to her, recalling how he’d met Jim Morrison on Venice Beach
when he was 19, or the time the piano he had inherited from his mother fell
off his pickup truck on the way to San Diego. Stacy also loved to barbeque,
and a couple of times last spring brought his grill out to Lawndale and cooked
carne asada for Treher’s school kids.
He had seen his share of turbulent times, Treher said, and had gone through
his “rebel without a cause” period as a Harley rider. The wild years were behind
him, though, and he seemed to have found real peace of mind in recent years.
“He’d just made to that point where he was happy,” she said. “He realized he
woke up in paradise every day. He got his life down to where it was very simple.
I think it was complicated for a long time.”
“He really wanted to take some time off to go fishing,” she added, noting that
he spent his teenage years working on fishing boats out of Redondo. “That fishing
pole was calling him. But for some reason he needed to go to work every day.
I don’t know why.”
Grady said Stacy worked from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, and then often went
home and worked on the website until the wee hours. Heath, who worked on the
website with him, said she’d sometimes send a message to him at 2 or 3 in the
morning and be surprised to get a response, as he’d be up working on the site.
“He was always positive, always moving forward,” she said. “He just made you
his friend.”
Grady also recalled just how deeply attached Stacy was to Redondo Beach – so
much so that when guys at the shop wanted to go to Torrance for breakfast instead
of his beloved Rod’s Charbroiler on Artesia Boulevard, he’d prefer not eating
instead of leaving town. Except for a few months living in San Diego, Grady
said, Stacy spent his entire 49 years in the South Bay.
“He rarely ventured out,” Grady said. “Going to Torrance was going far away
for him. That’s true.”
Jared Van Sloten, who had just turned over the reigns of the CERT alumni presidency
to Stacy, wrote a letter to fellow members the night of his death. “Randy was
a very loveable gentleman,” he wrote. “Those who came in contact with him felt
his gentleness, yet he projected a strength from within his being. Deep inside,
there was a warrior, ready to come to the aid of those in distress. He wore
his creed on his shoulder in flaming color. Never one to shirk the responsibilities
of life, he took on life's tasks as they came to him, head on. Within his peers,
he was lifted to the pinnacle of attainment, being elected as president of his
most cherished association, his CERT group. Quietly accepting this honor, he
could be seen silently smiling with pride, inside and out.
“We will miss you, Randy, each time we see a Fu Manchu, a flaming dragon, the
sound of a Harley, or see a beautifully constructed web site.”
Randy Stacy’s ashes will be spread on the sea at a ceremony at noon July 25.
For those interested in attending, transportation for up to 149 persons aboard
the Ocean Racer will be available free of charge, leaving its moorings at about
11:30 a.m. Call Mike Grady at 245-9029 for more information. ER