Relatives describe Paul Meile, 25, who was found dead outside Benicia on Monday

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

A free spirit. A talented musician who could play a song as soon as he heard it. An adventurer who used his jobs to get enough money to make another trip.

That’s how Paul Meile’s father and sister described the 25-year-old Mesa, Ariz., man whose body was found Monday lying between the railroad tracks a quarter mile north of Lake Herman Road.

“He had a beautiful heart. Everyone fell in love with my brother,” said Meile’s sister, Rachael Hines, three years his senior.

“He loved to travel,” Hines said Wednesday. Meile often traveled by bus, and sometimes would hop aboard a train.

“He said, ‘I know it’s not safe. I like being on them.’”

Hines said Meile often would work construction jobs and save his money to make another trip to the West Coast to visit friends and relatives, or to other parts of the country. Then he’d return to Mesa to build up his bank account for his next trip.

She said on his last journey her brother had gone out to the West Coast again, had traveled as far north as Washington, and had started to trek south, down to Los Angeles, to see a friend, and to Thousand Oaks where their father, Grant Meile, lives.

Afterward, Paul expected to go through Nevada on his return to Mesa, Hines said. She also lives in Mesa, as do many of the other members of the family.

In addition to Paul, Hines has a sister, Nicole, who is 10 years younger than Paul, as well as many other relatives.

Paul Meile had told Hines he would be home by Thanksgiving, and would be staying in Mesa to attend her wedding in March. “Mesa was home,” she said.

They last talked by telephone Sunday, she said.

Hines said her brother was introduced to music by his family. His grandfather, Paul Rains, also played guitar, and the instrument intrigued him when he was a child.

“He fell in love with it. It was his passion,” she said. “He can do everything by ear.”

Also speaking Wednesday, Meile’s father, Grant, said his only son “did it his way” from the day he was born in Midland, Texas. Paul Meile was born two months premature, Grant said.

Like Hines, Meile’s father described the young man as a free spirit and talented musician, but added that Meile also had talent in the kitchen.

“He cooked gourmet food,” his father said. “We’d go into a restaurant, and I wouldn’t know what to order. He’d say, ‘This is how they make this, and this is how they make that.’”

Meile loved his country, and was “a die-hard Republican,” his father said. “He knew his politics.”

The young man had hoped to serve in the military, but for that he needed his high school diploma. Meile never completed high school, frustrated by some of the rules and teasing from classmates.

He focused instead on music, and hoped to be a studio engineer, his father said.

Besides music, Meile also taught himself to skateboard, his father said. Because he grew up with sisters, he treated girls and women well, Grant Meile said.

Upon occasion, Meile dealt with alcohol and other addictions, his father said, explaining that the young man was “trying to get rid of the monkey on his back.”

But his son was a goodnatured, trusting man who enjoyed life, the senior Meile said. During his last trip to the West Coast, the young man had hoped to reach Alaska, but was turned back at the Canadian border, his father said.

However, Paul Meile didn’t let much get in his way when he traveled, his father said. He and his band once traveled to Hawaii to perform.

Meile could be a prankster, his father said. As he and other members of the family try to cope with the news of his death, the senior Meile said, “I keep expecting him to come around the corner and say, ‘Gotcha!’”

He said he saw something of himself — and his own grandfather, a hobo during the Great Depression — in his son. The senior Meile hitchhiked across the country three times, “and it didn’t bother me a bit.”

Grant Meile had predicted his son would “straighten up when he turns 28.” That’s how old he was when he settled down.

He said members of Solano County Sheriff’s Office and its coroner’s office have been particularly kind during the family tragedy. They told him a tattoo and fingerprints helped establish his son’s identity, and they counseled him on how to get Meile’s body sent to Arizona.

The senior Meile is in Mesa, too, having been given leave from his employer, West Coast Air Conditioning in Oxnard.

“We want our son back here, so we can be in peace,” he said.

“He rocked our world. He’s free, really free,” Meile said. “But I can’t believe he’s gone.”