LOS ANGELES -- Ron Goldman was handsome and carefree, just the sort who appealed to the young and beautiful crowd that worked and played in his super-trendy Brentwood neighborhood.
Now, as the O.J. Simpson saga unfolds, Goldman may be the forgotten victim in this larger-than-life tragedy.
Since Goldman, 25, was viciously stabbed to death June 12 with Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole, little has been said publicly about him.
"They say he was a male companion, Nicole's friend," friend Dolores Montero says. "Well, his name was Ron, and he was a good person."
Friends recall a man who volunteered, and later was paid, to help adults suffering from cerebral palsy. He once stunned a friend by leaping from a car to pull a family from an overturned van. Time after time, he impressed with his unswerving good cheer, wit and easy charm.
"Ron was the type of person who would walk in a room and it would light up like magic," says Eric Ross, a close friend. "He was always striving to do more, to give people 110%."
That attitude may have cost Goldman his life, when he offered to return a pair of eyeglasses that Nicole Simpson's mother had left at the Mezzaluna restaurant where he worked as a waiter.
It was on the steps of Simpson's condominium, that Goldman was stabbed almost two dozen times, in the head, neck, back, hands and thigh.
Many speculate that Goldman had been having an affair with Nicole Simpson, but virtually all his close friends deny that. Although he was known as a ladies' man, they say he was coming off a bad relationship, and was simply friends with Nicole.
"He wanted more than anything to have a monogamous relationship," says Gail Evertz, 40, a Brentwood friend and former manager of a Hollywood club. "He wanted somebody he could just shower with love."
Ron Goldman grew up in a Chicago suburb, a skinny, sweet kid who was well-liked but no knockout. But by the time his parents moved to Agoura Hills, a Los Angeles suburb, he'd blossomed into a striking young man.
"It was just amazing to see how many girls flocked to him when we went to a club," says Montero, who worked with him at a United Cerebral Palsy residential home. "Ron was just gorgeous."
Goldman already had begun modeling when he was invited in 1992 to appear on the TV show Studs. More recently, friends say, he was featured in an advertisement for a leading fashion designer.
Not long after his TV appearance, which he made wearing jeans and a neck chain, Goldman left the area where his parents lived.
He moved to Brentwood, where he became friends with a group of handsome young men and women - many were struggling actors and aspiring models.
"All of the guys were really players," says Tracey Lepera, 25, who was a member of the group that called itself "Barrington Place," a play on the TV show Melrose Place and Barrington Avenue, where many lived.
"Ron acted like that on the outside, but on the inside he really wanted to settle down. He didn't care about dating around. . . . Out of the whole group, he had the biggest heart," Lepera says.
"Ron didn't have that much money himself," adds one of his closest friends, Peter Argylis. "But if he had any left over, he'd give it to a homeless guy. . . . He would help anybody and everybody. . . . I'm a little shy myself, and Ron actually really helped me out of that."
Goldman had long wanted to become a tennis pro, but a bad knee ended that hope. He sought modeling and acting work while waiting tables, but unlike friends, Goldman was thinking of a steadier future.
"I saw the plans for the restaurant he wanted to open," says Argylis, 25. "I think he was really close to doing it."
Almost everyone who knew Ron Goldman agreed that he was just beginning to pull the strings of his life together. His father, Fred Goldman, has spoken only once publicly.
"Even when things didn't go 100% with the things he wanted to do, he seemed to have a way of bouncing back," the elder Goldman said, weeping.
"The bottom line is that Ron was a good person from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, inside and out."
