Skater’s Death Is a 2nd Tragic Warning : Accident: Matthew Purvis, remembered in a wake Sunday, died after a longboard spill eerily similar to a friend’s in 1997.

In his date book, Matthew Purvis kept a prayer card from the funeral of his friend Phillip Panetta, a 19-year-old skateboarder who crashed while careening helmetless down a Mission Viejo hill in the dark two years ago.

The prayer was a talisman, a warning and a memory for Purvis.

But it wasn’t enough.

About 9 p.m. Aug. 18, Purvis took his skateboard to the top of a long, steep hill on Lincoln Boulevard near Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. There, while his friend lit the way with his headlights, Purvis shot down the roadway, lost control and flew from his board, fracturing his skull. Like Panetta, he, too, had not been wearing a helmet. A week later, on Aug. 26, Purvis died of massive head trauma.

On Sunday, his mother, Bonnie, was at a loss to explain why her son had not heeded the tragic death of his Santa Margarita Catholic High School friend.

“I think it was the ‘Ah, it’s never going to happen to me’ kind of thing,” said Bonnie Purvis from her Rancho Santa Margarita home. “It’s sad because I walk around and see kids and they look like Matt, and they’re out there skating without helmets.”

Purvis’ death also was a grim reminder to Panetta’s stepfather, Frank Chiulli.

“I was shocked,” he said. “These are two kids in the same graduating class. You would have thought that one would have learned from the other.”

Longboards, the extra-long skateboards Purvis and Panetta rode, have surged in popularity in recent years, in part because of their surf- and snowboard-like feel. Skaters seek out hilly roads and parking structures where they can ride the 3- to 5-foot wooden planks with wheels.

Speeding down normally crowded roadways in the dark--with a buddy’s car both blocking traffic and lighting the way--is an added thrill.

“Since they are a longer board, they can go a lot faster” than conventional skateboards, said Blair Mardian of World Core Surf and Sport in San Clemente. “It’s easier to keep your balance on the longboards, and you can carve on it, so it’s more like snowboarding and surfing.”

Purvis, a junior at Loyola Marymount, had been riding only for about six months, said friends and family. He had ridden--and fallen--several times before on the hill where his fatal accident occurred.

At a wake for Purvis on Sunday night, friends and family put together a collage of pictures. They played his favorite band, the Grateful Dead, over radios at the mortuary. Later, they made wreaths of seaweed and tossed them in the ocean at Strands, his favorite spot, at Salt Creek Beach Park.

Sunday, too, was a night of painful memories for Panetta’s family.

Panetta died Oct. 4, 1997, on the steep grade of Jeronimo Road in Mission Viejo, where he and friends had gone to skateboard after attending a Santa Margarita High football game.

Racing down the road, Panetta hit a raised lane marker, lost his balance and fell. He suffered massive head injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

Five months earlier, Panetta and Purvis had graduated from Santa Margarita High. Panetta had hoped to attend cooking school in San Francisco.

Purvis, who was taking history classes and writing poetry at Loyola Marymount, was applying to study in Europe for the spring semester when he tumbled from his skateboard earlier this month.

Surgeons operated three times on his brain without success. He was on life support when he died at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.

Purvis’ father, Willie, said Sunday he hopes people will learn something from his son’s death.

“They can fix a broken arm or a leg pretty simply,” he said. “But [a head injury] is difficult--as we’ve learned--to recover from.”

“I’m not skating anymore,” said Jay Allan, Purvis’ college roommate, who said he had given up skateboarding twice before after breaking his leg and his wrist.

Purvis’ death, Allan said, “is the latest sign that I should be more aware of what I’m doing. I’ve been telling neighbors to wear helmets. And they listen.”

At O’Connor Mortuary in Laguna Hills on Sunday, Purvis’ high school friend June Abrams caught herself pulling young children aside, reminding them of the dangers of skateboarding.

“I’ve already been lecturing kids,” she said. “Before, I never really thought that it was a big deal for people to wear helmets. Now obviously I know.”