It is difficult to find meaning in death, particularly when the victim is young and responsible, as O'Leary was, cut down in the middle of the day at the height of a selfless career. Since his death, O'Leary's loved ones and colleagues have been retracing his final hours, compelled to look for an explanation, a pattern.
The youth, whose name was not released because of his age, had moved to Highland Park from Henderson, Nev., a week ago and did not know O'Leary.
It was O'Leary's job to track and help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among some of the area's most at-risk people, including Spanish-speaking immigrants, low-income black women and gay men.
O'Leary was a rising star in his field and an idol to his younger sister and brother. The Sacramento native had won a full scholarship to UCLA, where he graduated summa cum laude, and another full scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he earned a doctorate in anthropology.
The day he died, Jan. 20, O'Leary rose at his northeast L.A. home about 9 a.m. full of nervous energy. A behavioral scientist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, he had been scheduled to leave the next day for a conference at UC San Francisco. He would have been a featured speaker. A lean 6 feet tall with blond hair and bright green eyes, O'Leary was a runner who exercised daily. So to relax that morning, he put on some Bobby Darin swing music and grabbed his wife, Michele Rose O'Leary, to dance.
O'Leary met Michele Rose, 35, a petite brunet psychotherapist, during graduate school. She compared herself to former "American Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson -- very girl-next-door. But O'Leary saw her as a glamour girl, his own Charlize Theron.
As Darin crooned, O'Leary spun his wife across the floor:
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