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Eureka man may have helped foil hijackers By MARK FREEMAN A federal refuge manager and trained federal wildlife agent from Northern California was a passenger on the hijacked airplane that crashed Tuesday in Pennsylvania, and the man's friends are convinced he helped thwart the hijackers' plans to turn the plane into a weapon of terror. Richard Guadagno, 38, of Eureka, Calif., was a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge manager and law-enforcement officer who was just the sort of man to stand up to the hijackers, friends said Thursday. "He was not the kind of person who would sit back and watch something like this happen," said Dave Paullin, Guadagno's friend and supervisor in the national refuge system. "Having his law-enforcement background and being this real intense, gung-ho guy, I could definitely see him doing what he could to stop them. "We'll never know," Paullin said. "But that was the kind of guy he was." The notion that Guadagno, an unmarried outdoorsman who surfed and grew orchids in a backyard greenhouse, possibly was one of the unidentified heroes aboard United Flight 93 soothes his friends and family as they mourn his loss. "If he was going to go down, he was going to go down fighting," said Jim Houk, Guadagno's former manager at a cluster of Oregon wildlife refuges near Albany. "It's nice to think this way, that he saved countless other lives and who knows what else because we don't know where those terrorists planned to crash that plane." Guadagno was one of 38 passengers and seven crew members who were on the Boeing 757 bound Tuesday from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco. Two other hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. Guadagno's plane, however, crashed into a field near Pittsburgh, and federal authorities have speculated that the plane was bound for such possible targets as the U.S. Capitol, the White House or the presidential retreat at Camp David. Cellular telephone calls from those on the plane suggested that some passengers rushed the hijackers in the cockpit, and authorities speculate that this counterattack caused the 757 to crash. As soon as friends learned late Tuesday that Guadagno was on the downed plane, they were convinced the wiry, weightlifting man with a fiery attitude and no-nonsense demeanor was no bystander to Tuesday's events. "If he saw this unfolding and thought he could influence the outcome, he would be right in the middle of it," Paullin said. "I would not want to be on the receiving end of his wrath." Houk said he and others within the national wildlife refuge system consider Guadagno a hero. "But everybody who was on that plane was a hero," Houk said, "except the terrorists." Guadagno was a 17-year veteran of the national wildlife refuge system, spending the past 18 months as refuge manager at the Humboldt Bay refuge near Eureka. He previously helped manage a string of refuges near Albany. Guadagno was visiting his elderly parents and sister who live in Ewing, N.J., near Trenton, Paullin said. He was scheduled to fly from San Francisco to Medford and drive home before returning to work Wednesday, Paullin said. Guadagno, who had no children, lived alone with a German shepherd named Raven. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.