Army Spc. Trevor A. Wine, 22, Orange; Convoy Hits Explosive

In high school, Trevor Wine was the sort of guy everyone called a friend, an ex-officio big brother to many school buddies.

A clue to Wine’s (pronounced Win-ay) easygoing style was in his yearbook photograph.

“It shows him smiling, and that was Trevor all the time,” Paul Woo, principal of Calvary Chapel High School in Santa Ana, said of the handsome youth with the brush cut. “He was like a big brother to those around him. He was there to support them.”

Wine, 22, an Army specialist from Orange, died May 1 in Tikrit, Iraq, of injuries suffered the day before when his convoy vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, the Department of Defense announced.

Wine was a petroleum supply specialist assigned to the 24th Quartermaster company at Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Wine’s parents, Rick and Deborah Wine of Orange, declined to be interviewed.

But friends in two Costa Mesa neighborhoods where the family lived before moving to Orange expressed sympathy and support for the family by putting up homemade signs that read, “We love Trevor” and “Trevor, our hero.”

“The whole neighborhood is distraught,” said Dawn Hookano. “We should all hope for a son like Trevor.”

Friends and former neighbors describe Wine’s parents as typically American, hard-working people who were willing to drop everything and make sacrifices to help their children.

The soldier’s father, Rick Wine, owner of a masonry business, often did tile projects in neighbors’ homes, sometimes alongside Trevor, neighbors recalled.

The two had a close bond. Trevor Wine loved sports, especially baseball, and his dad spent weekends coaching baseball teams and driving his son to games and practices, said Terry Ferguson, a former neighbor and family friend.

When Wine started playing street hockey and then switched to ice hockey, his parents began attending hockey games, Ferguson said.

In the 18 years he knew the family, Ferguson said, he saw Wine grow from toddler to young man to soldier.

“He became a big brother to my youngest daughter. Then he joined the Army. He had a huge sense of responsibility,” Ferguson said.

An older brother, Todd Wine, 27, served as a Navy corpsman.

Whether at school or in his neighborhood, Wine had a knack for taking younger neighborhood kids under his wing.

He often was seen working on his old pickup truck, surrounded by some of the local youngsters.

“He was the kind of kid who you just enjoyed being around,” said Kevin Morell, a former neighbor.

Wine attended Concordia University, a Christian college in Irvine, but was unsure about what course of study to pursue. Instead, he joined the Army, friends said.

“My personal opinion is he was one of those students who would have been successful at whatever he wanted to do,” said Woo, who was a math teacher before his promotion to principal.

Wine also is survived by a sister, Traci.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa.