Cpl. Rudy Salas

Cpl. Rudy Salas 20, of Baldwin Park, Calif.; assigned to 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed May 20 in a non-combat-related vehicle accident in Anbar province.

Pictures of U.S. Marine Cpl. Rudy Salas, 20, and his girlfriend, Veronica Portillo, sit on shelves. She smiles, but the young man with big, soulful brown eyes and a standard-issue Marine buzz cut stares into the camera with a tough-guy look. He is, after all, a Marine in uniform. But other photos show the young man who died last week in a noncombat related vehicle accident in Iraq grinning from ear to ear, embracing his girlfriend, enjoying a day at Disneyland and a plate full of food. "Since he was little he liked the Marines," said Salas' mother, Elida Salas. "I don't know why." Salas joined the Marines the summer after he graduated Baldwin Park High School in 2001, where he played varsity football. He split his time between his home in Baldwin Park with Portillo, and his mother's house in San Bernardino. Elida Salas remembers how her little boy, the oldest of five children, loved to run and would sprint home before anyone had a chance to pick him up from school. Salas was also a quiet kid who liked to play with toy guns with his friends. "He was always responsible," said Sammy Salas, 19, Rudy's brother. "He always tried to influence me to go into the military."