Found this on Yahoo News. An interesting read
that has a bunch of information on the life of
Scott Helvenston.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20040403/ts_latimes/deathcame\
brutallytoamanwhoneverquit

Death Came Brutally to a Man Who 'Never Quit'

By Deborah Schoch, Julie Tamaki and Monte Morin
Times Staff Writers

Stephen "Scott" Helvenston was Hollywood's image
of a soldier — blond, bronzed and broad
shouldered. In fact, the 38-year-old former Navy
SEAL trained health-conscious Californians how to
pump iron like commandos and coached movie stars
to play the role of combat-ready recruits.

Days after the private security contractor and
three colleagues were killed by an angry Iraqi
mob, friends and colleagues recalled Helvenston
as a man whose energy and athleticism helped him
parlay his military service into work as a film
consultant, a fitness guru and an international
hired gun. But as family members prepared Friday
for the return of Helvenston's remains, relatives
lamented that the patriotic soldier and devoted
father they once knew had become a symbol of
American foreign policy.

"You know what they did to him? I can't talk
about it," his mother, Kathryn
Helvenston-Wettengel, of Leesburg, Fla., told the
Orlando Sentinel. "What happened to him is so
horrendous."

Helvenston's ex-wife, Patricia Irby, was en route
to Florida on Friday, where services are being
planned.

Helvenston, of Oceanside, was the divorced father
of two children, Kyle, 14, and Kelsey, 12, and
had served 12 years in the U.S. Navy (news - web
sites)'s elite special forces. He was working for
a private security firm, Blackwater Security
Consulting, when he and three colleagues were
ambushed in their cars and killed by
rocket-propelled grenades. In grisly images
broadcast around the globe, a crowd of Iraqis in
Fallouja hacked at their remains and hung two
charred corpses from the trestles of a bridge.

Friends found the images difficult to comprehend
because they believed Helvenston to be
unstoppable.

"The guy pretty much didn't know the word 'quit,'
" said Markus Heon, a physical trainer based in
Cardiff-by-the-Sea. "If he were to go down, I
wish he had gone down in a different way. I know,
for a fact, if he did, he would have taken a lot
of those guys with him."

A statement released by Helvenston's family said
he grew up in Florida, attended high school there
and joined the service at age 17.

"He prided himself on strength, agility, speed,
flexibility, balance, determination and
toughness," the statement said. "Scott never quit
anything in his life. After he broke his legs in
a parachute jump, he tried to walk away from the
scene."

"He was always really taking care of people,
which is what he was doing there" in Iraq (news -
web sites), said a family friend, Alice W. Brown,
51, of Del Mar. "Taking care of people — that was
Scott."

She describes how she and her family would meet
him to go rock climbing.

"He would have a whole pile of children," she
recalled. "I used to tell him, 'Scott, you ought
to be teaching high school PE.' Because he was
like the Pied Piper…. He just gave and gave and
gave."

Brown described him as a man of dignity and
morals.

"I had that sick feeling yesterday morning that
Scott was one of those guys," Brown said. "All
Americans are just outraged about this. I hope
we'll send more troops over there. I think we're
just understaffed over there. We need to
reinstate shock and awe over there."

After leaving the Navy, Helvenston settled in
Oceanside and helped start a fitness consulting
firm, Amphibian Athletics, that promised a Navy
SEAL-style workout for his customers. He also
found success in Hollywood as a stuntman and as
an instructor for movie and television actors.

His credits include the movie "G.I. Jane," in
which he showed Demi Moore how to endure the
rigors of military training, and the television
shows "Combat Missions," and "Man vs. Beast."

Friends and family say his serious side was
evident in his work for Blackwater Security.

"A lot of people are saying 'Do you think he went
over there for the money?,' " said Keith Woulard,
who worked with Helvenston as an instructor at
the Navy's Basic Underwater Demolition School in
Coronado and later was with him on the "G.I.
Jane" set. "Of course he did. But that wasn't his
main goal. It was to go over there and help out
and put his knowledge to use."

Blackwater Security employs former soldiers and
intelligence officers to provide armed security
and risk assessment to governments and
corporations worldwide.

The North Carolina-based company is one of dozens
of private security firms that operate in Iraq,
and employs former military specialists who
inhabit a murky and violent world of armed
conflict, private and public contracts and
intelligence gathering.

"Mobile security teams stand ready to be deployed
around the world with little notice in support of
U.S. national security objectives, private or
foreign interests," reads the company's website.

The other victims have been identified as Jerko
"Jerry" Zovko, 32 of Ohio; Wesley J. Batalona,
48, of Hawaii; and Michael Teague, 38, of
Clarksville, Tenn.

Zovko spoke five languages and joined the Army at
19. "He loved people," said his mother, Danica
Zovko. "He wanted the world to be without
borders, for everybody to be free and safe."

Batalona grew up one of 10 children in Hawaii and
joined the Army after high school. "We gave him
two choices," said his mother, Shibata Batalona.
"Either go to school and become a policeman or
join the service."

Teague served 12 years in the Army and was
awarded the Bronze Star for his service in
Afghanistan (news - web sites). His wife, Rhonda
Teague, described him as "a proud father, soldier
and American."

Woulard recalled Helvenston's love of
snowboarding and climbing and described him as a
dedicated father who took his kids with him
wherever he went. "He'd always have my kids,
too," he said.

Brown recalled Helvenston's love for his children
as well. She first met him in the late 1990s when
she signed up to take what she believes was his
first "Navy SEALs fitness boot camp," offered
through a Del Mar gym.

"It just turned my life around," she said,
recalling a regimen of rock climbing, running,
kayaking, races and relays that turned her into
an outdoors aficionado.

Helvenston encountered financial problems, and,
for a time, the family lived in a trailer near
Big Bear, where he worked as a camp host, Brown
said.

"That was sort of a difficult time," she said. He
and his wife divorced. "He felt, in his heart,
sometime, they would get together again. He just
loved his family," Brown said.

A family friend answering the telephone at the
Helvenston family home in Leesburg referred
reporters to an article quoting the family that
appeared in Friday's Orlando Sentinel.

In that article, his mother recounts how her son
called her about 6 a.m. Tuesday from somewhere in
Iraq and left a phone message for her while she
slept, the ringer on her phone turned off.

"He said, 'Mom, I love you and miss you. Don't
worry; I'm OK. I'm safe. I'll be home in June….
We're going to have our quality time. I'm going
to spoil you."

Services for her son will be scheduled when his
body is returned from Iraq, said McGee at the
home in Florida. He will be buried with full
military honors at the national cemetery in
Bushnell, Fla., he said.

The family is asking that memorial contributions
be sent to a fund created for the victims of the
attack. In their statement, they said that checks
may be made payable to "Memorial Fund" and sent
to: Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 159, Moyock, NC
27958.

Times staff writer Jennifer Mena contributed to
this report.

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