The man who fell to his death Monday from Lookout Mountain was trying to get the “perfect angle” for a photo of his son.
Mike Rubbelke thought the world of Christopher, a senior at Wheat Ridge High School.
So, high above Denver, the 47-year-old Rubbelke stepped over a guardrail at the side of the road to shoot back toward Christopher.
It was the last thing he ever did.
He fell 60 feet down the mountain to his death.
“He wanted to take a picture of Chris with a little better angle,” Mike’s brother, Myles Rubbelke, said Thursday. “He lost his balance. They were probably out celebrating Chris’ birthday.”
Chris, who played defensive end on Wheat Ridge’s Class 4A state championship team, had turned 18 the previous Friday.
Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, said not only was it extremely windy at the time, but the ground on the other side of the guardrail was treacherous.
Mike Rubbelke grew up in Huntington Beach, Calif., and graduated from Huntington Beach High School.
In 1985, he moved to Ridgway with his parents — mother, June, and father, Miles Rubbelke, a retired ironworker who had multiple sclerosis.
During his years in Ridgway, Mike worked as a tile setter in new and remodeled homes in Ridgway and Telluride. He also worked for the city of Ridgway for about seven years, keeping Ridgway beautiful, said Myles Rubbelke.
He moved back to California around 2006.
But in the fall of 2008, Mike left California and moved to Wheat Ridge was to be with Chris during his senior year at Wheat Ridge High School.
Mike’s friend Barbara Walsh said he relished being with his son and watching him play football on a state championship high school football team.
“I can’t tell you how proud he was of his son,” she said by phone from California. “He lived for Chris. They were the best of friends.”
Walsh, who said that she worked with and dated Mike Rubbelke for two years when he returned to California from Colorado, said Mike Rubbelke had a “huge heart.
Walsh said she has a son with Downs Syndrome and that Mike treated him as though her son was his own.
“He loved my son,” she said.
She said that she and Mike Rubbelke spoke to each other on average seven times a day. Now that he is gone, she said she and Chris talk that much. Since the loss of his dad on Monday, Chris has called her every day often late at night or early in the morning.
Myles Rubbelke said Mike was an avid football fan and had season tickets to watch the University of Southern California Trojans.
Walsh agreed.
“He ate, lived and breathed USC football,” she said. “He had every shirt, every jersey. He was in heaven when he went to their football games.”
“He was always going for it,” said Myles Rubbelke. “He loved the beach, and he loved being in the mountains. He was outgoing. He will be missed.”
He is survived by son Chris; a daughter, Stephanie Marie; brother Myles; and sisters Jeanette Jones and Cheryl Howard.
His ashes will be scattered in California on Thursday.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939
