PORTLAND, Ore. -- Slain actress Rebecca Schaeffer was an intelligent woman who 'brought out the best in herself and the best in others,' a Rabbi said Sunday during funeral services attended by hundreds of mourners.
Mourners included the slain actress's parents, Benson and Danna Schaeffer of Portland, Pam Dawber, who co-starred with the 21-year-old actress in the television show 'My Sister Sam,' and actor Mark Harmon.
Schaeffer, who was shot to death outside her Los Angeles apartment Tuesday, was described as a caring, warm person by Rabbi Emanuel Rose.
'She brought out the best in herself and the best in others,' he said during the service, attended by about 350 mourners outside a chapel at Ahavai Sholom Cemetery. 'She was intelligent, charismatic and effervescent. She was an amazing, special young lady.'
Schaeffer was fatally shot on Tuesday. One day later, police arrested Robert John Bardo, 19, of Tucson, Ariz., whom they described as an 'obsessive fan.'
He is being held in lieu of $1 million bail and is awaiting an extradition hearing Aug. 18.
Schaeffer was born in Eugene, 110 miles south of Portland, and raised in Portland. Her body was flown from Los Angeles to Portland Friday.
'She provoked admiration rather than jealousy,' the Rabbi said at the service. 'She was warm, caring, gentle.'
Jimmy Hammil of Portland, who was a friend of Schaeffer's when the two attended Lincoln High School in Portland, described the slain actress as 'a good person, very sweet.'
'I am full of sorrow,' he said after leaving the gravesite. 'She was a girl who had everything going for her in every way and she was wronged terribly. She was charming, outgoing and vivacious. She had a smile and good word for everybody.'
About a dozen bouquets of flowers were placed carefully at Schaeffer's grave beneath an evergreen tree at the cemetery, located on a tree-covered hillside southwest of downtown Portland.
Attached to one of the bouquets were balloons, on which were printed 'Love,' 'Shalom' and 'Rest well Rebecca.'
A public memorial for Schaeffer is planned Saturday in Los Angeles. The family asked that remembrances be contributions to a scholarship fund being established for young actresses at the UCLA School of Performing Arts.
The attack recalled the near-fatal assault by a deranged, obsessive fan on actress Theresa Saldana in 1982. A Scottish drifter, Arthur Jackson, was recently denied parole after authorities said he had continued to threaten Saldana, who was stabbed several times outside her home in Los Angeles, but was saved by a passer-by.
After Bardo was arrested, he told authorities where to find several articles, including a holster and a copy of J.S. Salinger's novel, 'Catcher in the Rye,' a book that Mark David Chapman was calmly reading when he was arrested after shooting and killing former Beatle John Lennon in New York.
Police have described Bardo's obsession as similar to the one John Hinckley had for actress Jody Foster, which led to his shooting President Reagan in 1981 to gain her attention.
