Access North Georgia -- Army Spc. Rafael A. Carrillo Jr. was living at a home for at-risk youths in the Texas Panhandle when he decided to risk everything for his country.

Carrillo, who was stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga. and was called T.J. by his friends and family, is the first alumnus of Boys Ranch killed in Iraq, said Reyne C. Telles, spokesman for the program.

Carrillo died June 28 in Baghdad when an enemy mortar detonated near his Humvee, the Department of Defense confirmed Tuesday. The 21-year-old had begun his second tour of duty in January and enjoyed the structured life he had grown accustomed to while living at the ranch's group homes.

"Every chance he got when he was home, he wanted to go to the ranch," said his mother, Amy Tippie, of Austin. "When he got back from the war, that was the first thing he wanted to do."

A year before he graduated from Boys Ranch High School, Carrillo signed up for the Army. Since he was just 17, he had to have the approval of his mother. Two weeks later, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came, and her heart sank.

"I felt like I had signed his death warrant," she said. "I said, 'T.J., you don't have to do this.' And he said, 'No, I do.'"

Carrillo was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart. He was with troops who were among the first to enter Baghdad.

"It was nerve-wracking as a mother to know your son is in the middle of that," Tippie said. "I was so extremely proud of what he was doing."

Carrillo was known as the class clown, a kid who liked to have fun while he lived at Boys Ranch, which sits on the prairie 36 miles northwest of Amarillo at a site once known for its Old West gunfights.

He played football and participated in wrestling. In his junior or senior year, he wrote a paper about how the strict lifestyle kept him from ending up as a thug, or in jail, his mother said.

He thrived in the military, said his former house mother, Paula Dunkerson.

"He left Boys Ranch a boy, and the first time he called me from Iraq, he was a man, you could just tell," she said.

Dunkerson recalled that Carrillo began displaying more sympathy for the Iraqi people. Tippie remembered his concern for children.

Just a few days before he died, he sent her a photo of him with a little Iraqi boy his unit had adopted and were giving candy and food.

"He said, "Mom, this boy, there's thousands more like him. That's the reason I'm here to make things better for him,' which made my heart swell with pride,'" she said.

Carrillo was at least the 158th Texas service member to have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to the Defense Department. He will be buried in Austin.