Luke Kristoffer Perkins

It was September 2, 1988 when Luke Kristoffer Perkins decided to greet the world feet first. His mother was having none of that, however, and after a successful cesarean section, all nine pounds eight ounces of him entered the world. Nine months after that, he was walking…already racing around on his chubby little legs instead of wasting much time on crawling. And from then on Luke did things faster than was strictly advisable.

It didn’t take him long to discover cars, either. It was a love affair that spanned his lifetime, and it started the way it did for most boys: bright yellow track and tiny toy cars. Sometimes they ended up in his mouth instead of on the track, but before long he had it figured out. If it had wheels, he wanted to try it out. There was usually some form of track all over the living room, or his bedroom, or in the family room.

Six years old, and time for kindergarten. He entered class a year older than most of his schoolmates, and social enough to make friends with all of them. Around the same time, dad tried to realize his dearest dream: to involve his son in peewee football. And so Luke donned pads that near doubled him in size, and put on a bright red jersey, and promptly took a seat on the bench. Unfortunately for dad, Luke would not become a football prodigy. In fact, he would see very little actual play. And before long, Luke decided that tossing around the pigskin just wasn’t in his future plans. But that wouldn’t be the end of Luke’s athletic career.

By the time he was in grade school, there was no question: Luke was everyone’s friend, and perhaps the teachers’ worst enemy. Like his father before him, Luke had a streak of mischief in him, and he was that kid in class that would always get in trouble for talking too loud, passing notes, or generally appearing to be off-topic. There were pranks, too, some in the form of pencils out of bus windows or stink bombs in the playground. Luke became very familiar with the hallway outside the principle’s office, and the family very familiar with the principle.

Well, he was a boy with plenty of energy, that was for sure, and it was up to mom and dad to curb some of those more devious plots. The method of choice? Street hockey.

There were more pads and jerseys, but this time Luke was an active player. He tumbled all over the street hockey rinks of our childhood. He was fast, and in between games you could always find him zipping down the hill behind the little blue Perkins house. He lived in those roller blades. And seeing this, Dad decided that if he couldn’t get Luke interested in football, then he could certainly get interested in street hockey. Before long those street hockey rinks resounded with the sound of dad’s voice booming, “Shoot! Shooooooot!”

But there were always the cars. Luke had graduated to remote controlled versions and electric racing tracks, but always there were the cars.

His school troubles never went away, either. Reading must have been something akin to torture, but Luke found a way to cope with that, too. His memory became a formidable tool, surprising everyone who came to realize what a struggle words were for him. Despite that, Luke could turn a phrase; his second weapon of choice would become a quick and easy charm, and when he did write, he did so in a simple, straightforward and engaging manner. Luke knew how to say what he wanted to express from a very young age. The kid’s tongue must have been pure silver by the time he was in his teens, and man, did he use that to his advantage.

“Where did this come from?” Mum would ask, staring down at an unfamiliar toy. Luke would look up at her, guileless ( after all, he usually looked downright angelic with his blonde hair and happy blue eyes ).

“I traded for it,” he would tell her, and it would be true. Somehow he could talk his friends into taking his used, broken toys for their newer, better-functioning items. And yet no one ever felt like they got the short end of the deal.

He spent eleven years in his first neighborhood, and soon he had found the other boys in the neighborhood. He, Danny Cox and Jeff Ashford soon formed a triumvirate, and there was no rock unturned after that. High school took the three of them in very different directions, but Luke and Jeff remained best friends -- brothers, really.

Luke didn’t finish high school at Vista High, where he started, but he did finish. In spite of all his troubles, he received his diploma from Palomar High School. Luke must have been the person most surprised by this success, but he knew what to do with it: that diploma became his ticket into the United States Air Force. During boot camp he learned how to march and prepare his uniform, and he wrote home about entering the Honor Guard. He liked that perhaps best, displaying a surprising affinity for the ceremonial.

But the Air Force wasn’t to be, and Luke came home after six months in Texas to immerse himself in cars completely. He went to the community colleges in the area and took every car course they had. Soon he was turning wrenches daily, just waiting for his break. He knew what he wanted, he’d known it from the beginning: he was going to be a mechanic, one way or the other.

Luke was a man of infectious laughter, of spontaneous dips in the Pacific Ocean and parking lot serenades. He was also a man of incredible courage. When a man came into the Chevron gas station he worked at and pointed a gun at him, Luke didn’t freeze. He responded with a calm quickness, and he never thought of himself as particularly brave for managing to keep the situation from getting out of hand. Later he would be fired for locking himself into the store with shoplifters to keep them from leaving, again displaying that iron will and courage that so many of us took for granted in him.

He didn’t mourn the loss of that job, not Luke. Instead he took a job with Lexus of Carlsbad and after just two weeks, was offered a job as a mechanic. The boy that we had watched struggle, the boy that we had rooted for so hard, started becoming a man in his own right. It didn’t keep him from driving like a bat out of hell, it didn’t keep him from partying into the early hours with his boys, but Luke started taking his job seriously. He’d get up early and make sure he got to work at time, and he took real pride in his work. He loved what he was doing, and you couldn’t find a person better at it then Luke.

Luke wasn’t the only one who liked fast cars, and he and his Nissan Sentra Spec-V found a home with Team Dynasti and their import cars. They became his family too. It wasn’t long before they were helping each other fix their cars, driving around town, and stopping at Primos every Tuesday for tacos. Taco Tuesday became Luke’s favorite day of the week by far, no argument. He and the guys would help each other get home, organize Toys for Tots events, or just hang out and have a few drinks. The guys all said that Luke could talk them into going along with even his most random ideas, always trying to have just a little more fun. Lexus might have made my brother proud, but Team Dynasti made him happy. He was protective of his boys, and talked about them all the time, as proud of his part in Team Dynasti as he was of his new mechanic job at Lexus.

And somewhere in there, I suspect my brother found himself in love. He had the classic symptoms, and he wasn’t embarrassed to call himself a hopeless romantic. Somewhere in there with all that grease and oil, he managed to afford roses and a diamond necklace. He introduced us to Chelsea Hammer, who quickly found herself a part of the family…before long, the family loved her and not just because Luke did.

People who talk about Luke say the same thing: that you had to laugh when he laughed. That he loved life. And that he might talk you out of your shoes, but he’d turn around and give you the shirt right off his back. He would sit on the side of the road with you until the tow truck showed up at three in the morning. His imagination would ( and did ) astound everyone that knew him. And Luke didn’t care what a person looked like, what they believed or where they came from, he gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Luke continues to teach us how to laugh about the small stuff, to love every second of life. He teaches us that sometimes there isn’t anything in the world like jumping into the ocean in the middle of winter. Luke’s life is a beacon in times of darkness, a reminder that it’s the people in life that matter, with all their quirks and surprises and faults.

Luke passed far, far too early. At twenty-two, he was beginning to stand up on his own feet and direct his life in the ways he wanted it to go. But there can be no doubt that he was a gift, that he was a man the entire world should mourn, because we have all lost something profound.

We will miss you, Luke, and love you our entire lives. Thank you for teaching us how to love life and each other so completely.