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News From Silicon Valley's Neighborhoods Bingham, Beamer Rememered Los Gatos--Family and friends of Los Gatos High School graduates Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer struggled to mourn their deaths after learning they were passengers aboard United Airlines flight 93, which crashed into a field outside Shanksville, Pa., last Tuesday. Bingham was 31. "I would like the world to remember Mark," said his mother, Alice Hoglan. "I'm so overjoyed to have been his mother." Bingham and his mother settled in Redwood Estates when he was around 13 years old. "We called him Bruiser when he was a little kid," said Bingham's uncle, Los Gatos optometrist Lee Hogland. "He was more like a little brother to us than a nephew." On the same plane was LGHS graduate Todd Beamer, 32, a sales manager for the Oracle Corporation. In 1986 Beamer's parents moved from Chicago to Los Gatos, where Beamer began his senior year at Los Gatos High. He quickly became involved in varsity baseball and basketball. "He was an awfully nice kid; he gave you 100 percent," said former LGHS assistant varsity baseball coach Wayne Senini. Life of a Laffoon Saratoga--He's been featured as the companion cameraman, the son of a Knight Ridder executive and, lately, as the husband of actress Anne Heche. But there's someone behind the dark good looks of Coley Laffoon, 27, who wed Heche in a small ceremony in Los Angeles on Sept. 1. He says he's made frequent trips up the coast to visit his parents and hit village hangouts like the Bank and Blue Rock Shoot. "I love Saratoga," said Laffoon by phone Sept. 12 while he was on the road with Heche on a book tour. The attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., put a halt to the tour, but not before 200 people turned out for the Toronto reading and signing, which took place the same day of the terrorist attacks. [ San Jose | Metroactive Central | Archives ]