Jeff Chaffin would smile when friends teased him about being a mama’s boy.

Before the 20-year-old Bakersfield College student was killed in a car crash on 7th Standard Road on Nov. 18, he went on vacations with his mother, would help her decorate the Christmas tree every year and always kissed her goodbye.

Nancy Chaffin describes her son as a mother’s dream.

“I want to scream at the top of my lungs, ‘He was wonderful, he was the best son in the world!’ ” she said with tears in her eyes. “He was a great friend, and I want to just scream it, and I can’t.”

Nancy Chaffin first heard the news of his death when Steven Chaffin, Jeff’s father, called her after receiving some alarming phone calls, telling him his son had been in an accident and hadn’t survived.

The crash also killed Amy Simons-Spaulding, 14; Tara Mitchell, 14, and Shantelee Batchelor, 13, all of Bakersfield.

By the time she got in contact with the coroner’s office, most of Chaffin’s friends had assembled at the Chaffin home for comfort, all in disbelief.

Jeff Chaffin was a passenger in the car allegedy driven by Michael Hugh Curtis Jr., 21, who is considered a suspect for fleeing the scene of the accident, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Curtis is being held in connection to unrelated rape charges dating back to 2000.

“It was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt,” Nancy Chaffin said. “Nothing compares to losing a child. My children are the most important thing in my life, and you feel like you lose a part of yourself as well. It’s been a nightmare I wish I could wake up from.”

Troy Hatton, 19, a friend and BC student said he was hanging out with Chaffin before Chaffin decided to go with Curtis that night. He’s angry with the way the media are treating his friend’s death.

“There’s a lot of things that have been in the newspaper that are just so wrong,” Hatton said. “So many accusations about him and Mike being buddy-buddy. If Jeff knew those girls, I would know those girls, and I know for a fact that he didn’t know those girls. … The newspaper’s gonna write anything to make money. They’re going to do anything for the person who sees the cover to pick it up and read it.”

Despite this, Nancy Chaffin says she knows how the girls’ families feel.

“My heart breaks for the families of those little girls,” she said. “I know what they’re feeling. I know my son would never put anyone in danger. He would not have been happy with whatever speed this young man was driving.”

Hatton said he keeps the poem he read at Chaffin’s funeral with him and has other people read it. This is his way of helping to keep his friend’s memory alive.

“I’ve already learned a lot from it,” he said. “You can’t change life, and you have to accept things for what they are, as bad or as wrong or as unfair as it seems to be. You still have to go on living your life, and with still living Jeff’s life for him. Still talking about him, still keeping him alive in our hearts.”

Although he lived with his mother, Chaffin worked with his father at AB Automation Inc. as an operations manager, often putting his mechanically inclined talent to use around the house. His friends said if you didn’t know him, you might think he was quiet and unobtrusive, but in reality he was sweet, kind, funny and caring. Like a lot of young men, Chaffin loved adventure. He thrived on being with friends and family, hunting, fishing and snowboarding.

To his friends, he was known as Jefro. He and Hatton were nicknamed Beavis and Big-Head. Hatton said everyone knew about Jeff and his friends.

“We all definitely had a reputation,” Hatton said. “People knew how close we were and that we would do anything for the other one.”

Chaffin’s death is hitting his sister, 22-year-old Stefanie Chaffin, especially hard.

“I’ll miss evrything,” she said. “He was my brother; we did everything together growing up. And there’s still so much more (I won’t see). We (both) would have gotten married and had kids, and I won’t see any of that happen now.”

At her brother’s funeral, she said the two were so close growing up that they “even had their own language.”

As a child, Chaffin wore glasses and went through the typical phases of wanting to be a Thundercat or a ninja when he grew up. Witt said the two even dressed up as ninjas nearly five Halloweens in a row. Curtis Hartman, 27, a cousin, remembered Chaffin as an adorable kid.

“He was a charmer,” Hartman said. “This kid, with the glasses. You were like ‘Oh my God, this kid is so goddamn cute.’ When he put those glasses on, he was irresistible.”

Nancy Chaffin said as he got older, Jeff became colorful and took a lot of pride in his appearance but hated taking pictures because he didn’t think he was handsome. He even had a yellow truck with flames on it, and could always be seen wearing a brightly colored hat. To his prom at Stockdale, he died his hair shockingly flame red, and wore a silver tie. His mother wore that tie to her son’s funeral.

Hatton recently dropped all of his BC classes after Chaffin’s death. He and 20-year-old Tommy Virden, another friend, are sporting tatoos in memory of Jeff. Five more friends intend on getting them as well. Some friends have had dreams about Chaffin since his death.

“It was so real,” Jeremy Smith, 20-year-old BC student and friend said. “He walked into my room and was like, ‘Hey dude! I just went to my uncle’s ’cause I had to get away. I tricked you guys!’ He was just right there. Sometimes it feels like I’m in heaven and I’m waiting for him to come up here with me. It’s hard to understand because I just don’t believe it.”

Nancy Chaffin said she and Jeff’s stepfather, Bob Joy, have a huge support system in her son’s friends.

“Over the last two weeks, I’ve decided that the United States is going to be all right in the future,” Joy said. “Just seeing these boys, what they’ve written and what they’ve said.”

The Chaffins’ home is filled with pictures of Jeff and Stefanie Chaffin, many of their first days of school, a mother’s shrine to her children. There is even a photo album dedicated to her son’s life, from when he was a baby until he graduated high school.

His mother said sometimes looking at the pictures is hard, but she’s always had them proudly displayed in her home. For Chaffin’s friends and family, they are memories caught in time.

On that last Saturday night, before he went out, Chaffin did what he always did: gave his mom a hug and said “I love you, Mama.” If there was one last thing his mother could say to him, it would be that she loves him, and is proud of him.

“He’ll always be alive in my heart,” she said. “As a mother I’ve lost a piece of my heart. He’ll always be my little baby boy, my pumpkin. He was so good to me. I would wonder sometimes, ‘How’d I get so lucky?’ and maybe it was because I was only going to have him for a short time.”