Crime & Safety
Service for Fallen Arizona Firefighter to Be Held Today
The community will bid farewell today to 21-year-old Seal Beach native Kevin Woyjeck at The Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove.
Written by City News Service
Family, friends and the Southland's firefighting community will bid farewell today to 21-year-old Seal Beach native Kevin Woyjeck, who was killed along with 18 fellow firefighters in a wildfire in Arizona last month.
The late-morning service for Woyjeck, who was the son of Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Joe Woyjeck, will be held at The Christ Cathedral, formerly the Crystal Cathedral but now a Roman Catholic church, followed by interment at Forest Lawn.
Woyjeck's body was brought back to Orange County last week with another
fallen colleague, 30-year-old Christopher MacKenzie, who was raised in the San
Jacinto Valley in Riverside County and graduated from Hemet High School in
2001.
The procession en route to Forest Lawn in Long Beach passed through Cerritos as locals gathered along the route to pay their respects to the fallen hero.
Woyjeck was with the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew, an elite
wildland firefighting unit. The deaths of 19 of the unit's members near Yarnell, Ariz., on June 30 was the worst wildland firefighting loss in the U.S. since the 1933 Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles, where 29 firefighters were killed.
He was a former member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department's Explorer Post 9 and worked with Care Ambulance Service in Southern California.
A memorial fund for the Woyjeck family has been established at the F&A Federal Credit Union, account number 177222-2625.
Woyjeck is survived by his parents, Joe and Anna, his brother Bobby and sister Maddy.
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