He said he also knows his 18-year-old son loved being a Marine.

Jason Franco had been in Iraq less than a month when he died Tuesday. He was the seventh Inland man to die in one of the war's deadliest months and the second Buena Vista High School graduate to die there this year.

About 2 a.m. Tuesday, the family got a knock on the front door. His mother, Guadalupe Franco, asked who it was, and when the answer was the Marine Corps, she knew.

The family had spoken to him just a few hours before he died.

"He was so happy to be there. That's why he volunteered," said his teary-eyed mother, who was glad to have had that last conversation.

"He didn't like saying goodbye," his father recalled.

Jason had wanted to become a Marine to follow in his father and uncle's footsteps. Genaro Franco served in the Marine Corps for 20 years before retiring and works for the U.S. Postal Service.

"He was proud that his dad was there," Guadalupe Franco said of the time her husband served in Kuwait.

Jason started swimming when he was little boy, and the Marine family was stationed in Hawaii. He kept it up, and during his freshman year, he played water polo for Mission Viejo High School. In 2002, the family moved to Corona, where he attended Santiago High School, but he struggled at Santiago, and after learning that he would not graduate on time, he went to Buena Vista High for what he described in a class paper he wrote as "a second chance.".

While there, Jason took classes in law enforcement through the regional occupation program, and he loved math.

Administrators and a teacher at Buena Vista remembered Franco as quiet, cooperative and polite.

"You'd almost have to draw him out for answers," said Dennis Brandt, a teacher who had Jason in his English class and later worked with him in the extended-day program.

"He was a very nice young man, very kind," said Janet Parks, the school's assistant principal.

He also liked to have fun, playing video games, going to parties and hanging out with friends were favorite pastimes. He loved his mother's lasagna and enchiladas; his favorite cat, Lucy Lou; and his new car.

Jason and his cousin, Jeff Ponce, had been good friends growing up.

"We always wanted to have fun," Ponce said. "Always looking for something to keep us entertained."