The following is a combination of Chris’s obituary and a life sketch written and delivered by his mother Tami Hocker, at Chris’s memorial service held on 12 December 2025 at the Cedar Hills 1st Ward Chapel.
Obituary / Life Sketch
Christopher (40) was born on July 24, 1985, in Alamosa, Colorado, to Seth and Tami Hocker. He was the fourth of seven children born to young parents, ages 24 and 26, living in married student housing in a town whose claim to fame was a coldest spot in the nation on many winter days. Chris passed away on December 4, 2025, having lived to be six months older than his father when he passed.
Two weeks before Chris’s first birthday, his father left for the Federal Law Enforcement Center in Glenco, Georgia. With cell phones still a science fiction gadget, there was no FaceTime, and the children didn’t see their father for five months. When we met him at the airport, Chris and Brandi toddled right past him, not recognizing him. At 18 months, Chris moved with the family to El Paso, Texas. At age 2 1/2, a mistake with the maintenance of our apartment furnace caused our family to be carbon monoxide poisoned every night as the furnace ran for a period of three months.
We did not know that this event would have a devastating effect on Chris’s life for many years. By age four, Chris had become a very chubby boy. His hypothalamus was damaged, and he could not tell when his stomach was full. He also began having absence seizures, which I misunderstood as inattentiveness and a stubborn refusal to follow directions.
By the time Chris was six, he had three younger siblings, one born with a birth defect, which required extra care and three surgeries in his first year. With our very busy and eventful lives, I figured Chris’s differences were just a part of his personality.
Chris struggled in school both educationally and socially. He had one true friend, Brian Hansen, who later became his brother-in-law and assistant caregiver. At eight years of age, Chris had his first seizure that I recognized as a seizure. And so began a life of neurology appointments, brain scans, and medications. Within a month of his first seizure, his father was diagnosed with leukemia for the first time. Three months later, we moved to Denver, Colorado, and the search for new medical care began for both of them.
Chris continued to struggle in school. The seizure medications affected his personality and behavior and caused him to gain 60 pounds in nine months. At one point, he was taking 30 pills a day in hopes of seizure control. Being the fattest kid at school made him the object of teasing, which increased his anger and decreased his self-esteem.
His behavior made him unable to attend school, and a teacher was sent to our home five hours a week for the second quarter of fifth grade. At the start of the second semester, he began attending a school for children with disabilities. During the following summer, Chris became a danger to himself, frequently putting himself in harm’s way. He became uncontrollable and was placed in a residential treatment home for kids with severe behavior issues. He lasted about four months there before he was admitted to the child psych unit at the Children’s Hospital, where he lived for another four months.
With much individual, parental, and family counseling, Chris was able to return home in late spring. The following fall, our family moved to International Falls, Minnesota, whose claim to fame was also the coldest spot in the nation. It was a huge change for all of us, but Chris was able to attend public school in a special education setting.
Through all of this, Chris’s seizures were never controlled, having one almost every day. Starting in the summer between seventh and eighth grade, Chris began having seizures every 15 to 20 minutes, 24 hours a day. We traveled to Minneapolis for treatment. That is when it was determined that he needed a life-saving surgery. At age 14, he required the right hemisphere of his brain to be removed. The seizures stopped, but the surgery left him with hemiparesis on the left side of his body. After four months in a children’s rehab hospital where he had to relearn everything, Chris returned home, having regained most of his abilities, but still unable to walk. Months of continued physical therapy got him on his feet again. He learned to walk, and with adaptations, he could manage his life normally again.
A week after his return home, Seth was re-diagnosed with leukemia, and we determined it would be best to move closer to our extended family. Gratefully, we ended up here in Cedar Hills. Seth passed away six months later.
A year after Chris’s brain surgery, he required another surgery on his right leg to straighten the bones and strengthen his dominant leg. Once again, he had to relearn to walk.
I tell you this long tale so that you understand just how much Chris overcame in his short lifetime.
Chris craved independence. Chris earned his Eagle Scout award in 2002. He received a certificate of completion from Lone Peak High School in 2004. Not satisfied with that, he enrolled in Alpine Life and Learning Center, where he received his high school diploma. Chris continued his education by taking classes at Mountainland Community College and Salt Lake Community College, receiving various certificates.
He became so independent that I rarely knew what he was up to until it had already happened. He enrolled in schools by himself and found rides to and from. He would leave the house, and I would ask where he was going. He would reply, “None of your business.” I am only just now being told about some of his activities and who all in the ward he roped into helping him. One morning he came upstairs in a white shirt and missionary tag and informed me he was a missionary. That was the first I knew about it. Chris served a service mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and worked in the family history center near the Mount Timpanogas Temple. He also served in many callings in his homeward.
He spent many years traveling, taking trips to Las Vegas, California, New York, and Scotland by himself. He bought diving equipment and was already taking diving lessons before I knew anything about it. The same pattern followed with his becoming a HAM radio operator. Likewise, he would just announce he was going to New York or Scotland. He didn’t ask for permission or help. He just figured out a way. He learned to scuba dive and joined a group of disabled divers, mostly veterans called The Dive Pirates. He dived many times in Cozumel, Mexico, the Cayman Islands, and once in Monterey, CA.
He lived on his own and took care of himself for about 10 years. I even felt comfortable moving to Colorado for three of those years. After I returned to Utah, Chris gradually began to require more help from me, something he never wanted. Over these last five years, Chris’s life became harder and harder. He hated needing help as much as he really needed it. His mental health declined, and his social behavior became erratic. He became at times his own worst enemy. Losing his independence and needing help left him frustrated and angry at the world.
This past year, he suffered multiple health scares. He had a heart attack, three pulmonary embolisms, pneumonia, and sepsis. Many of these problems occurred while he was homeless. It was a great blessing when he received housing at the beginning of November.
Even though he railed against the church and its members and blasphemed against God (which he did because it made me crazy), I would tell him how many people were praying for him. The first time I saw him in the nursing home, he told me to thank all of those who had prayed for him. He said it was those prayers that were responsible for him getting housed. The next week when I told him that sister Walden had passed away, he said, “Well, you know her and brother Walden went straight to the Celestial Kingdom.” Brother Walden had been a particular friend to Chris and given him rides to school at ALLC and then to his service mission.
If Chris is correct, there are many members of our ward headed to the Celestial Kingdom. Peggy Carpenter arranged everything for Chris’s Eagle project. Blair Arnell, Scott Gonzales, Michael Sears, the Francis’s, the Swenson’s, Rich Willis, all of his scout leaders, teachers, and many more members of our ward have been of great service to Chris throughout his life. I will be forever grateful. So many of you stopped to offer him rides when you saw him out and about. As he got angrier, he began to reject rides with unkind words. However, it didn’t stop many of you from trying.
I think also that Chris was an inspiration to many people, helping them to accept their trials and make the best of them. I am excited to someday meet the real Chris, the one who is not burdened by a broken body and mind. I know he is happily reunited with his father, and I believe that he flat out jumped out of his body and ran into the world of spirits.
I am grateful that Christ was my child. It wasn’t always easy, but I learned so much from him about individual agency, sacrifice, unconditional love, and other blessings made possible by the Savior’s Atonement. Chris made a lasting impression on all who knew him.
Chris is survived by his mother, Tami Hocker, his brothers Daniel, Ryan (Kuki), Rustin (Tainara), and Cody, and his sisters Brandi (Brian Hansen) and Ashley (Zeb Peterson). He is also survived by his grandmother, Patricia Wesley, grandfather Rusty Phelps, grandmother Karen Phelps, an aunt, Laurel (Jim Cooper), and uncle Ronald Beaman, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. Chris was preceded in death by his father Seth in 2001 and his aunt Cynthia Deville in 2008.
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