John Clukey, 25; Computer Consultant

John Clukey always assumed he would die from diabetes, the disease he developed at age 4. Instead, the 25-year-old Santa Paula resident, athlete and computer consultant died Friday pursuing one of his many passions: riding motorcycles.

Driving down a busy Los Angeles freeway last Friday, Clukey crashed into a van and suffered massive internal injuries. He died six hours later on the operating table, his heart giving way from stress as surgeons tried frantically to repair his severed liver, said his stepmother, Judy Clukey.

The nature of the accident came as a shock to Clukey’s father and stepmother. Knowing they were opposed to motorcycles, John did not tell them when he bought one a year ago, Judy Clukey said.

“We loved our children more than that,” she said. “We didn’t want them to be a fatality.”

Diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, John Clukey had attempted to slow the progress of the illness by keeping himself in top physical shape. He played soccer on different teams simultaneously, skied, bungee-jumped and scuba-dived, his father, Lee Clukey, wrote in a page-long summary of his son’s life.

John Clukey grew up in Torrance, moving with his father and stepmother to Santa Paula as a senior in high school, she said. He lived on his own in Santa Paula after graduation, attending UC Santa Barbara until recently, when he took a leave of absence to do computer consulting work, she said. He moved to Northridge about six weeks ago to be closer to the companies he was working for, Judy Clukey said.

His father noted that John lived life to its fullest. “He recently said,” his father wrote, “‘I have done everything in life I wanted to do. If I were to die today I would have no regrets.”’

In addition to his father and stepmother, John Michael Clukey is survived by his mother and stepfather, Milt and Carolyn Lohr of Rancho Santa Fe; a sister, Deanna Nicole Minor of Santa Paula; four stepbrothers and one stepsister.

Services will be held at the Skillin-Carroll Mortuary in Santa Paula on Friday.