Frederick Pokorney Jr. started his career as an enlisted man. He ended it as an officer.

At 6-foot-6, Pokorney played center on a Tonopah, Nev., High School basketball team that went 14-9 and was runner-up for the state championship in 1989.

“He was a nice looking, tall, muscular kid,” said Joann Cody, assistant sheriff in Nye County, Nev.

Pokorney had taken care of himself for many years. His mother left when he was 1½, said his father, Fred Pokorney Sr., who lives in Branson, Mo. The elder Pokorney had not spoken to his son in more than five years.

“It’s sad, but I don’t know much about his life,” his father said. “He had his own life and didn’t want to have much to do with me.”

Pokorney moved to Nevada when his father, a construction worker, got a temporary job at a missile test range near Tonopah. After his father left, his son stayed, living with the local sheriff and his basketball coach. “He was my son,” former sheriff Wade Lieseke said.

From there, Pokorney made his own way in life. People who knew him say he a very good person — independent, polite, friendly. “He was a good student, very diligent,” said Art Johnson, who taught him auto mechanics for two years.

He enlisted in the Marines and enrolled in the ROTC program at Oregon State University in 1997 to become an officer, a university spokesman said. He majored in anthropology and graduated in 2001.

He is survived by his wife, Rochelle, a young daughter, a brother and a sister.