SANTA CRUZ, CA -- UCSC graduate Richard Hooper died Tuesday in Iraq, one of approximately 20 people known to have perished when a bomb exploded outside United Nations headquarters there. He had been on assignment in Baghdad as the special assistant to the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs.

"Richard had a career that was all involved in the Middle East and all involved in service," a former teacher, Isebill Gruhn, said upon hearing that Hooper was one of the victims of the suicide bombing.

Hooper enrolled at UCSC in the fall of 1980. By the time he graduated in the spring of 1985, he had earned a bachelor's degree with honors in politics, a minor in economics, and honors from Stevenson College for all-around academic excellence.

Gruhn, now a UCSC professor emerita of politics, remembered sitting as the examiner--with associate professor of politics Sonia Alvarez--for Hooper's senior oral examination. The first line of their May 1985 evaluation sums up their impression: "A really rather brilliant honors performance," they wrote.

"Richard was a quiet person," Gruhn said. "His kind of quietness might lead someone to be surprised at how really brilliant he was. The sophistication of his thinking as an undergraduate was really more at a graduate-student level."

Gruhn stayed in touch with Hooper over the years. "We'd see each other every three or four years, and we maintained email contact."

For a person who learned Arabic as a UCSC student, spent years on the West Bank and Gaza, and ended his career as one of the U.N.'s chief experts on Arab affairs, Hooper died doing what he loved: He was trying to make a difference in the Middle East, Gruhn said.

"There are people who devote their lives to it, and they don't deserve to get blown up," she added. "I am very, very sad about Richard's death."