Staff Sgt. Jason L. Paton of Poway, Calif., was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks. He was three weeks from coming home when he was killed Aug. 22 along with 13 other soldiers in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Iraq. AP file photo

Paton, 25, was three weeks from coming home when he was killed Aug. 22 along with 13 other soldiers in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Multaka, Iraq, north of Baghdad.

Paton, of Poway, was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, in Hawai'i.

He had completed a tour of duty in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. He was on his second deployment to Iraq and was to have come home in July but the tour was extended as part of the troop surge ordered by President Bush.

A 2000 graduate of Poway High School, Paton and his fiancee, Nikki Palmer, were to marry in November. Palmer was a UC San Diego softball player, and Paton proposed to her at home plate after a game in March while he was home on leave.

Family members and Palmer remembered Paton as a devoted soldier who always looked out for others.

"He cared the world about other people," his father Robert said. "He'd go out of his way to help anybody — and that's reflected both in his personal life and his military life."

His family said Paton was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed surfing, water skiing and riding dirt bikes in the desert.

Paton was buried Thursday at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery on San Diego's Point Loma.

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