They leave behind wives and children and a grieving Coast Guard community trained to save lives instead of mourning the loss of their own.

"We're so small compared to the Army or the Navy," said Petty Officer 1st Class Gavin Hayes, who served in Kodiak, Alaska, with Petty Officer 1st Class David Skimin, whose body was recovered Thursday night in waters off O'ahu. "When this happens, it's pretty devastating."

The loss of an entire helicopter crew hasn't hit the Coast Guard since the crash of an HH-65 Dolphin helicopter off the California coast in June 1997.

Thursday night's ocean crash during a training mission killed co-pilot Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Wischmeier, 44, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Petty Officer 2nd Class Josh Nichols, 27, of Gloucester, Va.; and Skimin, 38, of San Bernardino, Calif.

The search for a fourth crewmember, a pilot whose name has not been released, continued last night.

Yesterday, the men were remembered by family and friends from the East Coast to Honolulu.

Skimin grew up in the high desert of California but he and his younger brother, Jimmy, snuck away to the beaches of Orange County whenever they could to go surfing.

"I never got better, so I stopped," Jimmy Skimin said yesterday from San Bernardino. "He just got better and better. He was braver than I was. He went whitewater rafting on the Colorado River just a couple of months ago and he wasn't afraid to ride 30-footers at Waimea. That's what shocked me — how he died on a training mission."

David Skimin was the oldest in the family — which included four adopted brothers and sisters — and clearly the boldest.

"He just loved his life," Jimmy Skimin said.

David Skimin didn't play sports in high school. But his love of the ocean pushed him toward the grueling training to become a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, a job that means jumping out of helicopters into waters sometimes so treacherous that rescue swimmers literally mean the difference between life and death.

"If there was something he wanted to do, he did it and he was good at it," Jimmy Skimin said. "I don't think he was good because he tried to be good. He was good because it came naturally to him."

The Coast Guard sent David Skimin to Galveston, Texas; San Francisco; Kodiak; and then Honolulu.

His brother regularly tried to pump him for details about flying in helicopters and jumping out of them.

The rescue swimmer would never speak of such things.

"I was always trying to dig into him," Jimmy Skimin said. "Maybe that's just a Coast Guard thing, not to bring bad luck."

LOVED ISLES, ALASKA

David Skimin was, however, always quick to talk about his love of Hawai'i and Alaska.

"His home was Alaska because he loved the serenity," his brother said. "He also picked up the vibe of the Hawai'i lifestyle. He would call me and say, 'Mahalo' and 'Aloha' and 'Mele Kalikimaka' at Christmas."

David Skimin lived on a sailboat just outside Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point with his wife, Sally, and planned to fix it up and sail back to Kodiak in a year or two when he transferred back to Alaska, Jimmy Skimin said.

He is also survived by a teen-age daughter in Sacramento, Calif., from a previous marriage.

In a YouTube video, David Skimin talks about his love of Alaska, which included surfing, fishing and salmon.

He was part of a hardcore handful of rescue swimmers in Kodiak, "who all surfed and crazy hiked," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Kathy Hayes, who trained with him in Coast Guard boot camp in 1992 at Cape May, N.J.

Hayes and her husband, Gavin, were reunited with Skimin in Kodiak from 2003 to 2006, where she found him to be "the same friendly, helpful guy."

Skimin shipped in surfboard blanks and set up a shaping shop for shortboards and longboards, and donned thick wet suits to take on the Alaskan waves.

"He was the only guy shaping surfboards in Kodiak Island," said Gavin Hayes, who grew up in Kane'ohe and graduated from Pearl City High School. "As far as surfing goes, the guy ripped. There were California-quality waves and no crowds. He loved Alaska — the fishing, hunting and hiking. The guy was in such good shape. And he made his own beer."

The Hayeses now live in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Gavin is stationed in Staten Island and Kathy works as a Coast Guard recruiter in lower Manhattan.

LIVED LIFE TO FULLEST

Petty Officer Josh Nichols also wasn't into sports growing up in Gloucester, Va. But he also was nevertheless a fearless athlete in his own right.

"He's always been a risk-taker kind of guy," said his older sister, Naomi Nichols.

There were four children in the Nichols family. Josh and his younger brother, James, grew up around their dad's airplane repair business at a small airport outside Gloucester.

"That's where the boys learned to love planes," Naomi Nichols said.

Josh was 14 years old and had a weekend job packing parachutes for a skydiving operation when 10 skydivers were killed during a jump.

"That tragedy changed him," Naomi Nichols said. "From that day on, he really lived his life like every day was his last. If he wanted to do something, he didn't wait for tomorrow. It was all about hard, fast, life."

For years, Josh Nichols continued jumping out of planes until a strong wind fouled his chute in North Carolina and he suddenly fell from the treeline to the ground, injuring his knee.

Being around so much death and near-death experiences didn't change Josh's charm.

"I definitely wouldn't call him a serious guy," she said. "He was fun-loving, charismatic. He should have been a used-car salesman. He was very popular with the girls, very popular with everybody."

Josh Nichols dropped out of high school and joined the Coast Guard, which later inspired his younger brother, James.

"Josh was always James' hero," his sister said.

Josh Nichols was assigned to a Coast Guard cutter in Mobile, Ala., and James Nichols was in Boston when they were sent to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"They signed up because it was a great job," their sister said. "But going to Katrina opened their eyes that the Coast Guard was more than just a job. It really mattered. Both their careers turned around during Katrina."

Last year, Josh Nichols married his wife, Danielle, and three months ago they had a son, Ty. He also has an 11-year-old daughter, Monica.

He gave up skydiving and "hung up his parachute at the request of his now-wife," Naomi Nichols said. "He just wanted to surf and be a dad. He couldn't wait to get Ty up on a surfboard."

The Nichols brothers ended up serving together at Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point, where they both worked on Coast Guard helicopters and got together with their wives every Sunday.

"That was just sheer coincidence that Josh and James were stationed together but they were as thick as thieves," Naomi said. "Sunday was family day in Hawai'i and the boys would go surfing."

By the time he was in Hawai'i, Josh Nichols had earned his general equivalency degree and an associate of arts degree, and was making plans to go to officer candidate school. He wanted to make the Coast Guard his career.

Somewhere inside, Naomi Nichols said, her brother "always had that hero thing. He wanted to be a hero."

A woman who answered the phone at Wischmeier's home in Kane'ohe identified herself as a "Coast Guard wife" and said it was "inappropriate" to talk about him.