Charles Sare remembered

Detective Vikki Carver began introducing herself to the Navy lieutenant when it hit her: He was there to tell her that her 23-year-old son, Charles O. Sare, had been killed in Iraq.

She had been walking into her office at the Cache County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday morning when she saw the lieutenant standing there.

"He didn't have to say anything," Carver said in a phone interview. "I just started crying. I knew."

Sare, a Navy seaman and paramedic, died Monday when the military vehicle he was a passenger in struck a roadside bomb near Iraq's Al Anbar Province, killing him and two others.

The Department of Defense announced Sare's death Wednesday.

Sare was born and raised in Hemet, Calif., where he had lived with his father. He joined the Navy in 2004 because he wanted to earn an emergency medical technician license, become a paramedic and help people, his father, Charles Sare, of Hemet, said.

The Hemet High School graduate was a hospital corpsman assigned to Naval Ambulatory Care Center in Port Hueneme, Calif., and was currently serving with Multi-National Corps in Iraq. It was his first tour of duty. Sare had been in Iraq for two months of a six-month stint when he was killed, Carver said. He had chosen combat duty to further his training, she said.

Carver described her son as a happy person who always had a smile on his face. His dad, however, didn't know how to begin talking about him.

"There are too many word to describe him," he said. "He was too outgoing. He was too much of a jokester."

"There are too many word to describe him," he said. "He was too outgoing. He was too much of a jokester."

Charles Sare said he had fond memories about raising his son. "I just enjoyed every minute of it," he said.

Boy Scouts and neighbors in Nibley, where Carver lives, placed flags up and down the street in remembrance of Charles O. Sare.

"The thing I will miss most about my son is his smile and eyes," Carver said.

Sare's 21-year-old brother took the news of his brother's death "pretty hard," Carver said.

Charles "liked people. Anybody could walk up and he would make you feel like his best friend," Carver said.

Funeral arrangements for Sare had not been finalized Wednesday, his father said.

From the Salt Lake Tribune

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Charles O. Sare killed in combat