From "The Californian" By John Hunneman:
Sam Hicks was born on Nov. 21, 1919, on a cattle ranch high in the Rocky Mountains above Jackson Hole, Wyo., where neighbors were few and the winter snow often piled high above the rooftops.
He grew up a true cowboy.
When he was 14 years old, Hicks and a friend drove 200 head of cattle through four feet of snow in below-zero weather over a mountain pass and 35 miles down into Jackson, his longtime friend and colleague Tom Hudson wrote in The High Country magazine, the Temecula-based publication Hudson and Hicks helped found.
"For his three-day arduous task he happily pocketed six dollars," Hudson wrote.
Hicks and his brother teamed up to carry the U.S. mail over a 17-mile route through the mountains. In the summer, mules carried the letters and packages. In winter, dog sleds were used to make deliveries.
Asked once to describe his younger days Hicks wrote: "I was a rodeo cowboy, a good auto and tractor mechanic, and a fine log carpenter. I could cut more timber, out-walk, out-shoot, out-cook and out-work anybody I knew and conducted myself well during regular Saturday night fights."
The Hicks family established a guide service for big game hunters and it was while leading a group into the back country in the late 1940s that Hicks first met Erle Stanley Gardner.
Gardner, the prolific author who penned the Perry Mason series of mystery novels, lived on his Rancho del Paisano next to the Pechanga Indian Reservation near Temecula.
"Dad was a good story teller," Hicks' daughter Nancy Maurice said last week from her home near Lake Shasta. "Erle Stanley Gardner recognized that talent in him."
Gardner was also impressed with Hicks' skills as an outdoorsman and with the way he had of getting along with people.
"My father was a Wyoming cowboy with an easy-going manner that everyone seemed to like," Maurice said.
Moving to Temecula
In 1947 Gardner asked Hicks and his family to move to Temecula to live on and manage his ranch.
For more than two decades Hicks mended fences and cut wood on the ranch, but he did much more than that, becoming the writer's confidant and right-hand man, traveling extensively with Gardner to New York, around California, across the American Southwest and on many explorations of Baja, California.
Along the way, Hicks learned to speak fluent Spanish and also became an expert photographer whose pictures were published in travel books written by Gardner.
Hicks also began writing articles on the outdoors and his travels that appeared in magazines such as Argosy, Sports Afield and The American Way.
His book "Desert Plants and People" was published in 1966.
A local historian
Always interested in history, in 1967 Hicks helped found The High Country, a quarterly magazine featuring tales of the region and contributed his own stories about the Southwest, the early days of Temecula and the people he met along the trail.
About that same time ---- in an effort to bring recognition to the western pioneers who, at one time or another, had found their way to and through Temecula ---- Hicks began planning and designing the "They Passed This Way" monument to be placed in a park in Temecula's Old Town.
The monument, made of 150 tons of granite quarried in the Temecula region nearly a century earlier, was carved with the names of 56 pioneers, some famous ---- like frontiersman Kit Carson and author Helen Hunt Jackson ---- and others not as well-known outside the region, including trapper Thomas "Pegleg" Smith, who amputated his own leg after being attacked by Indians and whittled a wooden one that served him for the rest of his life.
The monument, sponsored by the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, was dedicated on Oct. 4, 1969.
After Gardner died in 1970, Hicks built a ranch house across Pala Road from the author's place on the edge of the Pechanga reservation.
The last constable
In 1973, Riverside County officials appointed Hicks to be the constable for the Temecula and Murrieta area. Hicks patrolled the region serving warrants, settling family arguments and investigating shootings and robberies.
"Even when he had to serve court papers to people they couldn't help but like him," recalled Maurice.
Theresa Bell, Maurice's daughter, remembers riding around in a patrol car with her grandfather as he handled his constable duties.
"He was always very patient with me and with everyone else," said Bell, now 38. "He was just a lovely man."
Tragedy struck Hicks in July 1975 when his wife Ruby, then 53, and 31-year-old daughter Susan were killed when their car pulled onto Highway 395 from Rancho California Road and was hit by truck.
The following year, Hicks and his new wife, Kelly, began publishing a weekly tabloid newspaper called the Valley Post, covering news from Murrieta to Aguanga. In 1977 he sold the newspaper, which was renamed The Valley Press. In 1978, that newspaper merged with The Californian, then a weekly published in Fallbrook, and became The Californian and the Valley Press. These days the paper is known simply as The Californian.
A friendship begins
Local historian Bill Harker remembers meeting Hicks in the mid-1970s shortly after Harker and his wife, Evelyn, moved to Temecula.
"We'd been here about two weeks and I was taking out the trash one night when Sam walked up to me," Harker recalled. "He looked like a Boy Scout in his constable uniform."
Hicks welcomed him to Temecula.
"Then Sam asked me what I was doing on Friday," Harker said.
Because Harker was retired, he told him he had no plans.
"So he asked me to show up at the Three Lakes Municipal Courthouse for jury duty," laughed Harker.
Harker and Hicks were often put in charge of barbecues held by the Kaiser Co., the developers of Rancho California, when the firm would invite out-of-town guests and potential investors to the region.
"We had to start the fire a day ahead of time and then watch it all night," Harker recalled. "We'd sit there on a log sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels and Sam would tell me his life story."
The two became very good friends.
"He was so unassuming," Harker said. "He had a very gentle nature."
Hicks served as the constable until 1978 when the county did away with the position. He was then named a deputy marshal and held that position for a year before retiring.
The last thing he expected
Killing himself was the last thing Harker thought Sam Hicks would ever do.
But late on the night of Aug. 23, 1979, sitting alone on a log near the corral at his home, Hicks, then 59, pointed a gun at himself and pulled the trigger. His body was discovered two days later.
"He had been at our house the night before he committed suicide," Harker said. "He was preparing a presentation he was going to give in a few days to the school board. That sure indicated to me he had not thought of taking his own life."
About 500 people attended a memorial ceremony held for Hicks at Monument Park.
"Sam Hicks was a most unusual man," eulogized his friend John Bianchi. "He was, perhaps, a man from another age; from a time when men walked tall, spoke the truth, and made agreements with only a handshake. That was a time when things moved a little slower; when people took the time to pause and visit with old friends and to make new ones; a time when people took an interest in their community. That was Sam Hicks."
Three months later, the people of Temecula named the park with the giant granite monument for Sam Hicks.
Over the years, the park was maintained first by the Temecula school district and then by the private, nonprofit Monument Park Foundation.
When Temecula incorporated in 1989, the park was officially named Sam Hicks Monument Park ---- but not without controversy.
Councilman Karel Lindemans came under fire when he suggested it may not be appropriate to name the park for a man who had committed suicide.
Lindemans' remarks drew the wrath of the community and about 20 people attended a city council meeting to chastise the councilman, who later apologized to Hicks' family.
He'd be thrilled
Sam Hicks would hardly recognize his community these days, but there undoubtedly are things about Temecula he would enjoy, his granddaughter said.
On any given day it's not unusual to see a gaggle of youngsters at the park's playground, a guitar player practicing a song in the gazebo or an office worker sitting at the base of the monument taking a lunch break and likely wondering about all the names carved in the granite.
Schoolchildren who visit the nearby museum to learn the region's history can view a small display with a picture of Sam Hicks astride a horse and a shiny deputy marshal badge affixed to his cowboy hat.
"I think he would get a kick out of Temecula," Bell said. "He'd be thrilled at how many people love Temecula, because he loved Temecula so much."
That affection is evident in what the cowboy from Wyoming wrote in 1970 about his adopted community:
"Neither the unusual little town, or the ranching valley which surrounds it, have ever been flashy or famous. But it's an interesting place to come to and hospitality and friendship are the proud brands and earmarks of all the local people."
Sam Hicks was born on Nov. 21, 1919, on a cattle ranch high in the Rocky Mountains above Jackson Hole, Wyo., where neighbors were few and the winter snow often piled high above the rooftops.
He grew up a true cowboy.
When he was 14 years old, Hicks and a friend drove 200 head of cattle through four feet of snow in below-zero weather over a mountain pass and 35 miles down into Jackson, his longtime friend and colleague Tom Hudson wrote in The High Country magazine, the Temecula-based publication Hudson and Hicks helped found.
"For his three-day arduous task he happily pocketed six dollars," Hudson wrote.
Hicks and his brother teamed up to carry the U.S. mail over a 17-mile route through the mountains. In the summer, mules carried the letters and packages. In winter, dog sleds were used to make deliveries.
Asked once to describe his younger days Hicks wrote: "I was a rodeo cowboy, a good auto and tractor mechanic, and a fine log carpenter. I could cut more timber, out-walk, out-shoot, out-cook and out-work anybody I knew and conducted myself well during regular Saturday night fights."
The Hicks family established a guide service for big game hunters and it was while leading a group into the back country in the late 1940s that Hicks first met Erle Stanley Gardner.
Gardner, the prolific author who penned the Perry Mason series of mystery novels, lived on his Rancho del Paisano next to the Pechanga Indian Reservation near Temecula.
"Dad was a good story teller," Hicks' daughter Nancy Maurice said last week from her home near Lake Shasta. "Erle Stanley Gardner recognized that talent in him."
Gardner was also impressed with Hicks' skills as an outdoorsman and with the way he had of getting along with people.
"My father was a Wyoming cowboy with an easy-going manner that everyone seemed to like," Maurice said.
Moving to Temecula
In 1947 Gardner asked Hicks and his family to move to Temecula to live on and manage his ranch.
For more than two decades Hicks mended fences and cut wood on the ranch, but he did much more than that, becoming the writer's confidant and right-hand man, traveling extensively with Gardner to New York, around California, across the American Southwest and on many explorations of Baja, California.
Along the way, Hicks learned to speak fluent Spanish and also became an expert photographer whose pictures were published in travel books written by Gardner.
Hicks also began writing articles on the outdoors and his travels that appeared in magazines such as Argosy, Sports Afield and The American Way.
His book "Desert Plants and People" was published in 1966.
A local historian
Always interested in history, in 1967 Hicks helped found The High Country, a quarterly magazine featuring tales of the region and contributed his own stories about the Southwest, the early days of Temecula and the people he met along the trail.
About that same time ---- in an effort to bring recognition to the western pioneers who, at one time or another, had found their way to and through Temecula ---- Hicks began planning and designing the "They Passed This Way" monument to be placed in a park in Temecula's Old Town.
The monument, made of 150 tons of granite quarried in the Temecula region nearly a century earlier, was carved with the names of 56 pioneers, some famous ---- like frontiersman Kit Carson and author Helen Hunt Jackson ---- and others not as well-known outside the region, including trapper Thomas "Pegleg" Smith, who amputated his own leg after being attacked by Indians and whittled a wooden one that served him for the rest of his life.
The monument, sponsored by the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, was dedicated on Oct. 4, 1969.
After Gardner died in 1970, Hicks built a ranch house across Pala Road from the author's place on the edge of the Pechanga reservation.
The last constable
In 1973, Riverside County officials appointed Hicks to be the constable for the Temecula and Murrieta area. Hicks patrolled the region serving warrants, settling family arguments and investigating shootings and robberies.
"Even when he had to serve court papers to people they couldn't help but like him," recalled Maurice.
Theresa Bell, Maurice's daughter, remembers riding around in a patrol car with her grandfather as he handled his constable duties.
"He was always very patient with me and with everyone else," said Bell, now 38. "He was just a lovely man."
Tragedy struck Hicks in July 1975 when his wife Ruby, then 53, and 31-year-old daughter Susan were killed when their car pulled onto Highway 395 from Rancho California Road and was hit by truck.
The following year, Hicks and his new wife, Kelly, began publishing a weekly tabloid newspaper called the Valley Post, covering news from Murrieta to Aguanga. In 1977 he sold the newspaper, which was renamed The Valley Press. In 1978, that newspaper merged with The Californian, then a weekly published in Fallbrook, and became The Californian and the Valley Press. These days the paper is known simply as The Californian.
A friendship begins
Local historian Bill Harker remembers meeting Hicks in the mid-1970s shortly after Harker and his wife, Evelyn, moved to Temecula.
"We'd been here about two weeks and I was taking out the trash one night when Sam walked up to me," Harker recalled. "He looked like a Boy Scout in his constable uniform."
Hicks welcomed him to Temecula.
"Then Sam asked me what I was doing on Friday," Harker said.
Because Harker was retired, he told him he had no plans.
"So he asked me to show up at the Three Lakes Municipal Courthouse for jury duty," laughed Harker.
Harker and Hicks were often put in charge of barbecues held by the Kaiser Co., the developers of Rancho California, when the firm would invite out-of-town guests and potential investors to the region.
"We had to start the fire a day ahead of time and then watch it all night," Harker recalled. "We'd sit there on a log sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels and Sam would tell me his life story."
The two became very good friends.
"He was so unassuming," Harker said. "He had a very gentle nature."
Hicks served as the constable until 1978 when the county did away with the position. He was then named a deputy marshal and held that position for a year before retiring.
The last thing he expected
Killing himself was the last thing Harker thought Sam Hicks would ever do.
But late on the night of Aug. 23, 1979, sitting alone on a log near the corral at his home, Hicks, then 59, pointed a gun at himself and pulled the trigger. His body was discovered two days later.
"He had been at our house the night before he committed suicide," Harker said. "He was preparing a presentation he was going to give in a few days to the school board. That sure indicated to me he had not thought of taking his own life."
About 500 people attended a memorial ceremony held for Hicks at Monument Park.
"Sam Hicks was a most unusual man," eulogized his friend John Bianchi. "He was, perhaps, a man from another age; from a time when men walked tall, spoke the truth, and made agreements with only a handshake. That was a time when things moved a little slower; when people took the time to pause and visit with old friends and to make new ones; a time when people took an interest in their community. That was Sam Hicks."
Three months later, the people of Temecula named the park with the giant granite monument for Sam Hicks.
Over the years, the park was maintained first by the Temecula school district and then by the private, nonprofit Monument Park Foundation.
When Temecula incorporated in 1989, the park was officially named Sam Hicks Monument Park ---- but not without controversy.
Councilman Karel Lindemans came under fire when he suggested it may not be appropriate to name the park for a man who had committed suicide.
Lindemans' remarks drew the wrath of the community and about 20 people attended a city council meeting to chastise the councilman, who later apologized to Hicks' family.
He'd be thrilled
Sam Hicks would hardly recognize his community these days, but there undoubtedly are things about Temecula he would enjoy, his granddaughter said.
On any given day it's not unusual to see a gaggle of youngsters at the park's playground, a guitar player practicing a song in the gazebo or an office worker sitting at the base of the monument taking a lunch break and likely wondering about all the names carved in the granite.
Schoolchildren who visit the nearby museum to learn the region's history can view a small display with a picture of Sam Hicks astride a horse and a shiny deputy marshal badge affixed to his cowboy hat.
"I think he would get a kick out of Temecula," Bell said. "He'd be thrilled at how many people love Temecula, because he loved Temecula so much."
That affection is evident in what the cowboy from Wyoming wrote in 1970 about his adopted community:
"Neither the unusual little town, or the ranching valley which surrounds it, have ever been flashy or famous. But it's an interesting place to come to and hospitality and friendship are the proud brands and earmarks of all the local people."
From "The Californian" By John Hunneman:
Sam Hicks was born on Nov. 21, 1919, on a cattle ranch high in the Rocky Mountains above Jackson Hole, Wyo., where neighbors were few and the winter snow often piled high above the rooftops.
He grew up a true cowboy.
When he was 14 years old, Hicks and a friend drove 200 head of cattle through four feet of snow in below-zero weather over a mountain pass and 35 miles down into Jackson, his longtime friend and colleague Tom Hudson wrote in The High Country magazine, the Temecula-based publication Hudson and Hicks helped found.
"For his three-day arduous task he happily pocketed six dollars," Hudson wrote.
Hicks and his brother teamed up to carry the U.S. mail over a 17-mile route through the mountains. In the summer, mules carried the letters and packages. In winter, dog sleds were used to make deliveries.
Asked once to describe his younger days Hicks wrote: "I was a rodeo cowboy, a good auto and tractor mechanic, and a fine log carpenter. I could cut more timber, out-walk, out-shoot, out-cook and out-work anybody I knew and conducted myself well during regular Saturday night fights."
The Hicks family established a guide service for big game hunters and it was while leading a group into the back country in the late 1940s that Hicks first met Erle Stanley Gardner.
Gardner, the prolific author who penned the Perry Mason series of mystery novels, lived on his Rancho del Paisano next to the Pechanga Indian Reservation near Temecula.
"Dad was a good story teller," Hicks' daughter Nancy Maurice said last week from her home near Lake Shasta. "Erle Stanley Gardner recognized that talent in him."
Gardner was also impressed with Hicks' skills as an outdoorsman and with the way he had of getting along with people.
"My father was a Wyoming cowboy with an easy-going manner that everyone seemed to like," Maurice said.
Moving to Temecula
In 1947 Gardner asked Hicks and his family to move to Temecula to live on and manage his ranch.
For more than two decades Hicks mended fences and cut wood on the ranch, but he did much more than that, becoming the writer's confidant and right-hand man, traveling extensively with Gardner to New York, around California, across the American Southwest and on many explorations of Baja, California.
Along the way, Hicks learned to speak fluent Spanish and also became an expert photographer whose pictures were published in travel books written by Gardner.
Hicks also began writing articles on the outdoors and his travels that appeared in magazines such as Argosy, Sports Afield and The American Way.
His book "Desert Plants and People" was published in 1966.
A local historian
Always interested in history, in 1967 Hicks helped found The High Country, a quarterly magazine featuring tales of the region and contributed his own stories about the Southwest, the early days of Temecula and the people he met along the trail.
About that same time ---- in an effort to bring recognition to the western pioneers who, at one time or another, had found their way to and through Temecula ---- Hicks began planning and designing the "They Passed This Way" monument to be placed in a park in Temecula's Old Town.
The monument, made of 150 tons of granite quarried in the Temecula region nearly a century earlier, was carved with the names of 56 pioneers, some famous ---- like frontiersman Kit Carson and author Helen Hunt Jackson ---- and others not as well-known outside the region, including trapper Thomas "Pegleg" Smith, who amputated his own leg after being attacked by Indians and whittled a wooden one that served him for the rest of his life.
The monument, sponsored by the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, was dedicated on Oct. 4, 1969.
After Gardner died in 1970, Hicks built a ranch house across Pala Road from the author's place on the edge of the Pechanga reservation.
The last constable
In 1973, Riverside County officials appointed Hicks to be the constable for the Temecula and Murrieta area. Hicks patrolled the region serving warrants, settling family arguments and investigating shootings and robberies.
"Even when he had to serve court papers to people they couldn't help but like him," recalled Maurice.
Theresa Bell, Maurice's daughter, remembers riding around in a patrol car with her grandfather as he handled his constable duties.
"He was always very patient with me and with everyone else," said Bell, now 38. "He was just a lovely man."
Tragedy struck Hicks in July 1975 when his wife Ruby, then 53, and 31-year-old daughter Susan were killed when their car pulled onto Highway 395 from Rancho California Road and was hit by truck.
The following year, Hicks and his new wife, Kelly, began publishing a weekly tabloid newspaper called the Valley Post, covering news from Murrieta to Aguanga. In 1977 he sold the newspaper, which was renamed The Valley Press. In 1978, that newspaper merged with The Californian, then a weekly published in Fallbrook, and became The Californian and the Valley Press. These days the paper is known simply as The Californian.
A friendship begins
Local historian Bill Harker remembers meeting Hicks in the mid-1970s shortly after Harker and his wife, Evelyn, moved to Temecula.
"We'd been here about two weeks and I was taking out the trash one night when Sam walked up to me," Harker recalled. "He looked like a Boy Scout in his constable uniform."
Hicks welcomed him to Temecula.
"Then Sam asked me what I was doing on Friday," Harker said.
Because Harker was retired, he told him he had no plans.
"So he asked me to show up at the Three Lakes Municipal Courthouse for jury duty," laughed Harker.
Harker and Hicks were often put in charge of barbecues held by the Kaiser Co., the developers of Rancho California, when the firm would invite out-of-town guests and potential investors to the region.
"We had to start the fire a day ahead of time and then watch it all night," Harker recalled. "We'd sit there on a log sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels and Sam would tell me his life story."
The two became very good friends.
"He was so unassuming," Harker said. "He had a very gentle nature."
Hicks served as the constable until 1978 when the county did away with the position. He was then named a deputy marshal and held that position for a year before retiring.
The last thing he expected
Killing himself was the last thing Harker thought Sam Hicks would ever do.
But late on the night of Aug. 23, 1979, sitting alone on a log near the corral at his home, Hicks, then 59, pointed a gun at himself and pulled the trigger. His body was discovered two days later.
"He had been at our house the night before he committed suicide," Harker said. "He was preparing a presentation he was going to give in a few days to the school board. That sure indicated to me he had not thought of taking his own life."
About 500 people attended a memorial ceremony held for Hicks at Monument Park.
"Sam Hicks was a most unusual man," eulogized his friend John Bianchi. "He was, perhaps, a man from another age; from a time when men walked tall, spoke the truth, and made agreements with only a handshake. That was a time when things moved a little slower; when people took the time to pause and visit with old friends and to make new ones; a time when people took an interest in their community. That was Sam Hicks."
Three months later, the people of Temecula named the park with the giant granite monument for Sam Hicks.
Over the years, the park was maintained first by the Temecula school district and then by the private, nonprofit Monument Park Foundation.
When Temecula incorporated in 1989, the park was officially named Sam Hicks Monument Park ---- but not without controversy.
Councilman Karel Lindemans came under fire when he suggested it may not be appropriate to name the park for a man who had committed suicide.
Lindemans' remarks drew the wrath of the community and about 20 people attended a city council meeting to chastise the councilman, who later apologized to Hicks' family.
He'd be thrilled
Sam Hicks would hardly recognize his community these days, but there undoubtedly are things about Temecula he would enjoy, his granddaughter said.
On any given day it's not unusual to see a gaggle of youngsters at the park's playground, a guitar player practicing a song in the gazebo or an office worker sitting at the base of the monument taking a lunch break and likely wondering about all the names carved in the granite.
Schoolchildren who visit the nearby museum to learn the region's history can view a small display with a picture of Sam Hicks astride a horse and a shiny deputy marshal badge affixed to his cowboy hat.
"I think he would get a kick out of Temecula," Bell said. "He'd be thrilled at how many people love Temecula, because he loved Temecula so much."
That affection is evident in what the cowboy from Wyoming wrote in 1970 about his adopted community:
"Neither the unusual little town, or the ranching valley which surrounds it, have ever been flashy or famous. But it's an interesting place to come to and hospitality and friendship are the proud brands and earmarks of all the local people."
Sam Hicks was born on Nov. 21, 1919, on a cattle ranch high in the Rocky Mountains above Jackson Hole, Wyo., where neighbors were few and the winter snow often piled high above the rooftops.
He grew up a true cowboy.
When he was 14 years old, Hicks and a friend drove 200 head of cattle through four feet of snow in below-zero weather over a mountain pass and 35 miles down into Jackson, his longtime friend and colleague Tom Hudson wrote in The High Country magazine, the Temecula-based publication Hudson and Hicks helped found.
"For his three-day arduous task he happily pocketed six dollars," Hudson wrote.
Hicks and his brother teamed up to carry the U.S. mail over a 17-mile route through the mountains. In the summer, mules carried the letters and packages. In winter, dog sleds were used to make deliveries.
Asked once to describe his younger days Hicks wrote: "I was a rodeo cowboy, a good auto and tractor mechanic, and a fine log carpenter. I could cut more timber, out-walk, out-shoot, out-cook and out-work anybody I knew and conducted myself well during regular Saturday night fights."
The Hicks family established a guide service for big game hunters and it was while leading a group into the back country in the late 1940s that Hicks first met Erle Stanley Gardner.
Gardner, the prolific author who penned the Perry Mason series of mystery novels, lived on his Rancho del Paisano next to the Pechanga Indian Reservation near Temecula.
"Dad was a good story teller," Hicks' daughter Nancy Maurice said last week from her home near Lake Shasta. "Erle Stanley Gardner recognized that talent in him."
Gardner was also impressed with Hicks' skills as an outdoorsman and with the way he had of getting along with people.
"My father was a Wyoming cowboy with an easy-going manner that everyone seemed to like," Maurice said.
Moving to Temecula
In 1947 Gardner asked Hicks and his family to move to Temecula to live on and manage his ranch.
For more than two decades Hicks mended fences and cut wood on the ranch, but he did much more than that, becoming the writer's confidant and right-hand man, traveling extensively with Gardner to New York, around California, across the American Southwest and on many explorations of Baja, California.
Along the way, Hicks learned to speak fluent Spanish and also became an expert photographer whose pictures were published in travel books written by Gardner.
Hicks also began writing articles on the outdoors and his travels that appeared in magazines such as Argosy, Sports Afield and The American Way.
His book "Desert Plants and People" was published in 1966.
A local historian
Always interested in history, in 1967 Hicks helped found The High Country, a quarterly magazine featuring tales of the region and contributed his own stories about the Southwest, the early days of Temecula and the people he met along the trail.
About that same time ---- in an effort to bring recognition to the western pioneers who, at one time or another, had found their way to and through Temecula ---- Hicks began planning and designing the "They Passed This Way" monument to be placed in a park in Temecula's Old Town.
The monument, made of 150 tons of granite quarried in the Temecula region nearly a century earlier, was carved with the names of 56 pioneers, some famous ---- like frontiersman Kit Carson and author Helen Hunt Jackson ---- and others not as well-known outside the region, including trapper Thomas "Pegleg" Smith, who amputated his own leg after being attacked by Indians and whittled a wooden one that served him for the rest of his life.
The monument, sponsored by the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, was dedicated on Oct. 4, 1969.
After Gardner died in 1970, Hicks built a ranch house across Pala Road from the author's place on the edge of the Pechanga reservation.
The last constable
In 1973, Riverside County officials appointed Hicks to be the constable for the Temecula and Murrieta area. Hicks patrolled the region serving warrants, settling family arguments and investigating shootings and robberies.
"Even when he had to serve court papers to people they couldn't help but like him," recalled Maurice.
Theresa Bell, Maurice's daughter, remembers riding around in a patrol car with her grandfather as he handled his constable duties.
"He was always very patient with me and with everyone else," said Bell, now 38. "He was just a lovely man."
Tragedy struck Hicks in July 1975 when his wife Ruby, then 53, and 31-year-old daughter Susan were killed when their car pulled onto Highway 395 from Rancho California Road and was hit by truck.
The following year, Hicks and his new wife, Kelly, began publishing a weekly tabloid newspaper called the Valley Post, covering news from Murrieta to Aguanga. In 1977 he sold the newspaper, which was renamed The Valley Press. In 1978, that newspaper merged with The Californian, then a weekly published in Fallbrook, and became The Californian and the Valley Press. These days the paper is known simply as The Californian.
A friendship begins
Local historian Bill Harker remembers meeting Hicks in the mid-1970s shortly after Harker and his wife, Evelyn, moved to Temecula.
"We'd been here about two weeks and I was taking out the trash one night when Sam walked up to me," Harker recalled. "He looked like a Boy Scout in his constable uniform."
Hicks welcomed him to Temecula.
"Then Sam asked me what I was doing on Friday," Harker said.
Because Harker was retired, he told him he had no plans.
"So he asked me to show up at the Three Lakes Municipal Courthouse for jury duty," laughed Harker.
Harker and Hicks were often put in charge of barbecues held by the Kaiser Co., the developers of Rancho California, when the firm would invite out-of-town guests and potential investors to the region.
"We had to start the fire a day ahead of time and then watch it all night," Harker recalled. "We'd sit there on a log sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels and Sam would tell me his life story."
The two became very good friends.
"He was so unassuming," Harker said. "He had a very gentle nature."
Hicks served as the constable until 1978 when the county did away with the position. He was then named a deputy marshal and held that position for a year before retiring.
The last thing he expected
Killing himself was the last thing Harker thought Sam Hicks would ever do.
But late on the night of Aug. 23, 1979, sitting alone on a log near the corral at his home, Hicks, then 59, pointed a gun at himself and pulled the trigger. His body was discovered two days later.
"He had been at our house the night before he committed suicide," Harker said. "He was preparing a presentation he was going to give in a few days to the school board. That sure indicated to me he had not thought of taking his own life."
About 500 people attended a memorial ceremony held for Hicks at Monument Park.
"Sam Hicks was a most unusual man," eulogized his friend John Bianchi. "He was, perhaps, a man from another age; from a time when men walked tall, spoke the truth, and made agreements with only a handshake. That was a time when things moved a little slower; when people took the time to pause and visit with old friends and to make new ones; a time when people took an interest in their community. That was Sam Hicks."
Three months later, the people of Temecula named the park with the giant granite monument for Sam Hicks.
Over the years, the park was maintained first by the Temecula school district and then by the private, nonprofit Monument Park Foundation.
When Temecula incorporated in 1989, the park was officially named Sam Hicks Monument Park ---- but not without controversy.
Councilman Karel Lindemans came under fire when he suggested it may not be appropriate to name the park for a man who had committed suicide.
Lindemans' remarks drew the wrath of the community and about 20 people attended a city council meeting to chastise the councilman, who later apologized to Hicks' family.
He'd be thrilled
Sam Hicks would hardly recognize his community these days, but there undoubtedly are things about Temecula he would enjoy, his granddaughter said.
On any given day it's not unusual to see a gaggle of youngsters at the park's playground, a guitar player practicing a song in the gazebo or an office worker sitting at the base of the monument taking a lunch break and likely wondering about all the names carved in the granite.
Schoolchildren who visit the nearby museum to learn the region's history can view a small display with a picture of Sam Hicks astride a horse and a shiny deputy marshal badge affixed to his cowboy hat.
"I think he would get a kick out of Temecula," Bell said. "He'd be thrilled at how many people love Temecula, because he loved Temecula so much."
That affection is evident in what the cowboy from Wyoming wrote in 1970 about his adopted community:
"Neither the unusual little town, or the ranching valley which surrounds it, have ever been flashy or famous. But it's an interesting place to come to and hospitality and friendship are the proud brands and earmarks of all the local people."
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