Gov. Brown, attorney general honor fallen California Highway Patrol officer

ROSEVILLE - California's governor and attorney general joined hundreds of law enforcement officers and other mourners Tuesday to honor a California Highway Patrol officer killed as he directed traffic over a snowy Sierra Nevada highway.

Officer Nathan Taylor was remembered at his memorial service for going beyond the call of duty to assist motorists as he patrolled a remote stretch of Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada.

"We are honored a man of Nathan's caliber wore our badge," CHP Commissioner Joseph Farrow said before presenting the badge to his widow, Becky Taylor. It was the same badge Farrow pinned on Taylor in 2010 as he became an officer.

She told mourners it was just her husband's nature to assist others. She held in her arms one of the couple's three sons, ages 3, 5 and 8, until it was time for her to accept the folded American flag that had been draped over her husband's casket.

Law enforcement helicopters flew overhead, one peeling off in a missing man formation.

A procession led by bagpipers escorted the casket out of the church in Roseville, near Taylor's hometown.

Horses, one of them with a symbolic empty saddle, and four mounted officers preceded the hearse as it left the church and passed under a giant American flag hoisted by a pair of fire department ladder trucks.

Taylor was struck by an out-of-control driver March 12 near Donner Summit west of Truckee and died at a Reno hospital a day later after surgery.

Friends, colleagues and family members said he was a soft touch who sometimes spent his own money to help stranded motorists and was known to help make the needed repairs himself in his CHP uniform.

"Ever since he was a boy, Nathan went about doing good," said family friend Mike Schmidt. "He had an especially soft heart for the elderly, the downtrodden, the underdog."

Gov. Jerry Brown, First Lady Ann Gust Brown and state Attorney General Kamala Harris attended the memorial but did not speak.

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Associated Press Photographer Rich Pedroncelli contributed to this story