Va. counselor slain day after arrival

Maj. L. Eduardo Caraveo, an Army psychologist from Woodbridge, arrived at Fort Hood on Wednesday, eager to step into the next challenge in a life devoted to helping people through their most stressful times.

He had already spent years counseling prison inmates. He offered anger management training. And he ran seminars in Prince William County and across the country for couples having trouble in their marriages. Now, he would be heading to Afghanistan to help treat service members suffering from combat stress.

But less than 24 hours after his move from Northern Virginia to Texas, Caraveo was gunned down, one of the 13 victims of the Fort Hood massacre.

Caraveo, 52, "was a role model for me," said his son, Eduardo, 31, of Tucson, a state prison correctional officer. "He wanted us to get the message that nothing was impossible."

A native of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, who grew up selling newspapers at the border crossing to help support his family, the elder Caraveo came to the United States as a teenager knowing very little English. He was determined to make something of himself, said his family and friends. He graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso, making him the first in his family to go to college, and he received a doctorate in psychology from the University of Arizona.

In Arizona, Caraveo worked with special education students in local school districts and taught psychology courses at Pima Community College before being hired by the federal Bureau of Prisons in the early 1990s.

That job took him to Altoona, Pa., Victorville, Calif., and, eventually, the Washington area, where he was developing a treatment program for sex offenders, his son said. He also launched a business that offered anger-management counseling and "Yes, I Do" marriage seminars for couples who couldn't afford individual therapy sessions, according to his Web site.

Caraveo never forgot his humble beginnings, said Rudy Valenzuela, a friend of 25 years who said the psychologist retained a lifelong hatred of mayonnaise after a childhood spent eating sandwiches made of nothing but bread spread with the creamy condiment. As an adult, Caraveo went out of his way to lend money to those who needed it -- including Valenzuela during a period when he was struggling to keep his law practice afloat. He felt a special responsibility to help other Latinos, his son said. Caraveo became a Medical Service Corps officer in the Army Reserve a decade ago to add to his federal service and improve his retirement benefits, Valenzuela said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. released a statement after the Fort Hood shootings: "My thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the family of Dr. Eduardo Caraveo, a Bureau of Prisons psychologist who was killed Thursday . . . as well as to all those who are grieving the loss of loved ones in this tragic event. . . . Department of Justice personnel can be found answering the call to service in communities throughout the world every day. I applaud and honor each of them for their dedication, and we will continue to stand by them as they work to protect the country."

After his first marriage ended in divorce, Caraveo remarried five years ago, Valenzuela said, beginning a time he considered the happiest of his life. On Saturday, a lone uncarved pumpkin sat on the front step of the two-story Woodbridge home Caraveo shared with his wife, their 3-year-old son and her two daughters. A neighbor in the quiet cul-de-sac said Caraveo spent many evenings tossing a baseball in the yard with his children.

A third son, Jose Armando Caraveo, 25, is a student at the University of Arizona.

"All he ever talked about and cared about was his family," Valenzuela said. "He never liked to leave. He was happy being at home. But he understood what it meant to serve his country."