EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Service for ‘an Everyday Hero’ : Funeral: Mourners remember veteran motorcycle officer for his humor and adventurous spirit. He plunged to his death off a freeway after the earthquake.

Clarence Wayne Dean was not your typical cop, and he did not have a typical police officer’s funeral.

More than 1,000 people showed up Monday from as far away as Arizona to honor and remember the veteran motorcycle officer who plummeted to his death off the Antelope Valley Freeway minutes after it broke apart in last week’s earthquake.

At the Rose Hills Cemetery in Whittier, there was the traditional ceremony for an officer who fell in the line of duty: a helicopter flyby, a gun salute and a riderless horse with the officer’s boots facing backward in the stirrups.

But at the request of his family, to remember Dean’s irreverence and individuality, his taste for adventure and his sense of humor, the service ended on an decidedly untraditional note.

As Mayor Richard Riordan, Police Chief Willie L. Williams and other dignitaries looked on, loudspeakers blared his favorite song, “Born to Be Wild.”

The rock tune by the group Steppenwolf began, “Get your motor running/ head out on the highway/ looking for adventure in whatever comes our way.”

But that was Dean, his friends said: a man crazy for adventure.

A divorced father of two, Dean, 46, had left his Lancaster home and was riding down the freeway within minutes of the powerful 4:31 a.m. quake, even though his shift did not start for more than two hours. He was killed when he rounded a bend on an Antelope Valley Freeway overpass, where it joins the southbound Golden State Freeway, and could not stop from plunging 30 feet off the severed roadway.

The gregarious cop with a surfer’s blond hair was remembered fondly by his colleagues and family as a practical joker whose pranks could prompt laughter even from the motorists to whom he was issuing speeding tickets.

“God put Wayne in our lives as a gift,” said Sgt. Ron Moen, a police chaplain, “to bring laughter to a hurting world.”

A story was told of the time Dean came to work after an injury wearing white tennis shoes. A sergeant ordered Dean to replace them with standard-issue black shoes, and so he went out shopping--for a $2 can of black spray paint.

“He made himself the best pair of black shoes around,” said Officer Bill Harkness, Dean’s colleague in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division and a friend for 27 years.

With 26 years on the force--10 of them as a motorcycle officer--Dean was a caring man who often seemed to think more of the welfare of his friends and family than of his own, Harkness said.

“He could have come up with a million excuses why he couldn’t go in to work that day,” Harkness said. “But he got up, put on his uniform, and went in.

“I consider Clarence Wayne Dean a hero,” Harkness said. “No, he’s not a textbook hero. He was an everyday hero; the guy who made you feel good . . . who knew his obligation to his city.”

Capt. Ronald W. Bergmann, who commands the Valley Traffic Division, said more than $2,000 has been raised for Dean’s family, and Harkness and others urged those in attendance to give more. Dean is survived by a daughter, Tracy, 23, and a son, Guy, 25, who wants to become a police officer.