Jeremy Adam Lara’s life revolved around three things: family, playing baseball and winning.

His parents describe him as a joker and a trouble maker. But his horseplay was never meant to cause harm, as Martha Lara, his mother, explained, “It was only to have fun.”

And Jeremy started having fun as early as 2 years old, when, one day, Jeremy was nowhere to be found.

His parents searched inside and outside their apartment, but Jeremy seemed to have vanished.

They finally decided to call police, but found it unnecessary, when his father spotted Jeremy on top of the refrigerator.

“He was sitting there eating cookies,” his mother said. “Until now we don’t know how he got up there.”

At 6 years of age, his mother did not know what to do anymore.

“He was too hyper,” she said. “They (his brothers and cousins) all were. We had to find a way to keep them entertained.”

That is when Jeremy’s baseball career began; his parents enrolled his brother Giovanni Lara and him to the All-Stars.

“I remember him sitting at the end of the curve where the catcher stands, legs crossed, with his hands on his face, crying,” his father recalls.

Jeremy was too small too play.

“He told me, “You just watch daddy, next year I’ll be right there playing with them,'” his father said.

And he was. For the next two years Jeremy and his brother see-sawed pitcher and catcher positions, until the coaches decided they could no longer play together.

His brother quit baseball, but Jeremy remained active with the team until he was 13 years old.

In his years of elementary school, Jeremy was doing great in school, joining and winning spelling bees and math contests.

“We knew when he was nervous because he would extend his arm and twist his hand,” his mom remembers.

In junior high Jeremy found himself bored in class, but not for the same reasons as other teens.

“His teacher called us for a conference and we were thinking, ‘my god, what did he do?'” his mother said.

But the news were actually far from what the Laras had in mind. Jeremy was finishing one-hour tests in twenty minutes and doing well.

“The teacher had to give him books and high school level work to keep him entertained, because he would sit in his desk drumming his fingers for the rest of the time,” his mother explained.

The school recommended enrolling Jeremy on the “gifted” program which focused kids on academics after school, but Jeremy didn’t like the idea of giving up baseball for school work.

His mother recalls telling him over and over to turn off the TV while doing homework, but Jeremy only replied that it was easy.

“Test me,” he would tell her.

“He loved to play video games,” his mother explained. “But in three days he would go through the entire game and grow bored with it.”

While attending Paramount High School, Jeremy’s popularity grew.

Jeremy’s brother became friends with famous Spanish singer Adán “Chalino” Sanchez, who was killed in March of 2004, and since Jeremy and his brother were very close, he too became friends with the singer.

Sanchez introduced them to other famous Spanish singers like Lupillo Rivera and Valentin Elizalde, his favorite singer.

They liked to go out to night clubs and mingle with the famous faces of Spanish TV. Sanchez even had them join him in one of his music videos.

His senior year, Jeremy was named Mr. GQ in the yearbook and was a prince in his Winter Formal dance.

But his interests in friends and parties did not override his interest in school. Jeremy was the first male in the history of Paramount High School to receive the Scholars Award in Home Economics.

It also did not take over his love for baseball.

In 2002 he joined the Long Beach Breakers, a traveling baseball team, while still playing baseball for his school.

He met Sal Dorado there, who remembers him as a quiet guy when he didn’t know someone, but “very social” if you were his friend.

In a game at Miami, Fl, Jeremy was offered a full scholarship to play for the University of Miami, but he refused, saying that he did not want to be far away from his family.

In 2003 he broke his collarbone while dirt biking in Mexico. The doctors told him to stay off his shoulder for at least six weeks before resuming practice.

His father thought he was not going to play again.

“He told me, ‘in five weeks I am going to be pitching again,'” his father said. “In three weeks he was already at practice and in five weeks he was already pitching again. He was very positive.”

By that time, Jeremy was pitching a 95-mph fastball, and he was only 18 years old.

He even struck out “El Camaron” Diaz, a professional baseball player from Los Ostioneros de Guaimas, Sonora, a baseball team from Mexico, in a game put together on one of their travels to the United States.

“That’s when I knew he was going to be something big in life,” his father said.

In September of 2004 Jeremy enrolled in Cerritos and the baseball team. Dorado was a part of the team as well.

This semester Jeremy went through spring training, but did not get to play when the season started. His life made a sudden turn.

“That whole week he was acting strange,” Dorado said. “On Saturday (Jan. 22), out of nowhere he started to thank me for being his friend and helping him out.

“I told him, ‘you’re talking stupid…that’s what friends are for.'”

The next day, a group of friends met at a house two blocks from Jeremy’s home.

His mother watched him leave from the door saying, “Bye papas, be careful.”

“I called him like fifteen minutes later and he wasn’t answering. (My husband) walked in and I told him Jeremy wasn’t answering. That’s when the phone rang.”

It was one of Jeremy’s friends. His father answered and turned red yelling, “No,” explained Jeremy’s mom.

Jeremy had been shot in the back in a drive-by shooting. One of his friend’s Carlos Luna, had also been shot.

The family believes the bullet perforated his lungs and that caused him to collapse. They have not asked for the autopsy report; they don’t feel ready to heart the results.

But he didn’t feel it right away. According to Jeremy’s friends, he was trying to help Luna up when he put his hand to his back and collapsed.

When the paramedics got to the house, they didn’t know what was wrong with him. His wound did not bleed.

Jeremy died at the hospital before his parents could reach him.

His parents rushed to the hospital, but did not receive any information on Jeremy at the front desk. They were placed in a room until a doctor, hesitant to tell them the news, entered the room.

“I told him just to tell me straight out how my son was. That’s when he told me Jeremy had just died,” his father said.

Jeremy’s mother ran out of the hospital, crying and yelling.

On the day Jeremy was supposed to be playing his first league game with Cerritos, he was being put to rest at Cypress Forest Lawn.

According to the family, there were more than 300 cars and over 600 people present.

“Until now our life has been filled with a pain that only God knows when it will stop,” his father said. “I lost my idol.”

According to the family, Jeremy’s brother has shut down since his death. He doesn’t want to be home, he sleeps most of the time and he shuns away from his family.

“They took a part of my heart…we were always together,” he said. Jeremy’s mother says that she doesn’t know how to feel.

“Sometimes I am confused, other times sad, but mostly I am angry,” she said. “We are all going to die some time, but he didn’t have to die so young, especially when he had such a bright future ahead of him.”

The two men in the car were caught three days after the shooting. They are facing criminal charges.

The family now knows that Jeremy was not meant to die that day. One of his friends had received death threats in the form of letters and he was simply at the wr
ong place at the wrong time.

The Dodgers were waiting for Seattle and the Angels to come up with a figure for Jeremy, whom they had been watching since high school, to sign him to the team.

But when the Angels looked for Jeremy, he was no longer playing baseball. He had already traveled to another field away from home.

“He loved to win,” his father said.

This time, Jeremy lost in the worst way possible.

“Even though they took him from me, I know he is watching me, I know he is here next to me, but I can’t touch him, and that is what hurts he most,” his mother said.