Michael Barr Sandoe

Michael Barr Sandoe, 25, ex-paratrooper

A UFO sighting might not have been much more startling to residents of rural Abingdon, Va., in the Blue Ridge foothills, than the news that one of their own was among the Heaven's Gate dead. Sandoe, son of an evangelical minister, had been decorated for his service as an infantry paratrooper in Desert Storm in 1991, and friends remember him as a popular senior class president. "He seemed carefree, wanting to have fun," says Patricia Pasco. "He was always the class clown." To Sandoe's family, word of his suicide came as a double shock. "The other families seemed to know their son or daughter was involved [in the cult]," says half-brother James. "We didn't."