Community mourns RB boy’s death
The memorial service for Jonathan George Vassiliadis will be at 2 p.m. Thursday, March 22 at Maranatha Chapel, 10752 Coastwood Road in Rancho Bernardo.
A graveside service was held at Dearborn Memorial Park in Poway on Tuesday.
The Rancho Bernardo 14-year-old died March 15, an hour after collapsing while running laps before soccer practice at the RB Community Park.
According to a letter “Tsunami” teammate Alec Burgess wrote to Apostolos “Paul” and Ismene Vassiliadis, their son was happy and energetic up to the moment he collapsed.
“Jonathan was laughing, running around and in a great mood,” Alec wrote. “Before we began our warm-ups, he and I juggled the soccer ball back and forth about 40 times.”
Alec went on to say how the two then began running and that Jonathan said to the guys behind them to “run faster.”
After that, Alec said Jonathan veered off course, indicated that he was going to kick a soccer ball that came their way back to another team practicing, and collapsed.
Jonathan’s father, who for years coached his son’s team and was helping this year, said he did not see his son fall since he was talking to the coach at that moment.
“He was a pretty active boy,” Paul Vassiliadis said. “He always tried to find time to be with friends.
“He wanted to be with ... people all the time,” Paul Vassiliadis said. “He kept (his mother and I) on our toes with outdoor activities.”
Those activities included soccer — which Jonathan began playing at age 4 — tennis and bicycle riding.
In January, the family went skiing at Big Bear.
Paul Vassiliadis said this was to be Jonathan’s final year on the Rancho Bernardo Youth Soccer Association team, since the next year “he wanted to enter the high school teams for soccer and tennis.”
Jonathan was also active in his church’s youth group activities and could speak Greek, which he perfected during family vacations to Greece and at the youth camp of the Evangelical Church of Athens.
Ismene Vassiliadis said her son liked traveling around the world. During those trips, they went to England, Germany, Austria, the Greek Islands, Canada and throughout the United States, especially the east coast.
“We traveled a lot,” she said.
According to his mother, Jonathan’s other favorite past times were watching reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” with his maternal grandmother, the Discovery and History channels — especially when topics pertained to World War II — and detective investigation shows.
“He just discovered ‘Star Trek,’” Ismene Vassiliadis said. “He was a joker, liked to laugh and get laughs out of others.
“Jonathan was extremely outgoing and social and could carry on a conversation with adults and kids just the same.”
Paul Vassiliadis said their son also liked to entertain and would often call his parents upstairs to make a presentation or put on a show.
Jonathan, who was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, lived in Rancho Bernardo since he was 4 months old, attended Cornerstone Christian School in Poway during his elementary years and went to Bernardo Heights Middle School from sixth through eighth grade.
“He was athletic and a fun kid to be around with high energy,” said Principal Elaine Johnson.
According to his AVID teacher Kati DeBolt, Jonathan was “highly intelligent, curious about everything, always worked for the greater good of individuals around him, encouraging and helpful.
“He had outstanding presentation skills and could easily hold the attention of an audience,” DeBolt said.
DeBolt went on to describe his individualistic personalty and said, “Jon was always his ‘own man.’ He was unafraid to be himself. I greatly admired him.”
Jonathan’s peers created memorials at Bernardo Heights Middle School and the Rancho Bernardo Glassman Recreation Center soccer field.
On Friday, he was recognized as Bernardo Heights Middle School’s “person of character” for the day.
The entire student body and faculty also held a minute of silence in his memory.
It will be at least several weeks until autopsy results give San Diego County Medical Examiner investigators an explanation as to why
Jonathan collapsed shortly after 7 p.m. and died at 8:20 p.m. at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.
“It’s unusual for a 14-year-old to collapse on a field,” said police Sgt. Gary Mitrovich, adding that thus far, the investigation has not revealed any wrongdoing.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Jonathan’s memory be made to either Far Reaching Ministries, MCS (Children Sanctuary), 41685 Date St., Suite 101, Murrieta, CA 92562 or Greek Evangelical Church of L.A., Benjamin Child Support Society, 69 Suffolk Ave., Sierra Madre, CA 91024.