Family members are remembering a taxi driver killed over the weekend as a man who loved his family, engaged with all kinds of people, and dreamed of retiring to become a full-time writer.

Bruce Orton, 68, drove a taxi for Yellow Cab for over 20 years in Anchorage. Early Sunday morning, he made a turn from 79th Avenue onto Old Seward Highway when a red Mitsubishi Mirage

Orton died at the scene of the crash.

Aaron Orton, Bruce’s son who now lives in Oregon, says he heard a knock on the door Sunday. Authorities had arrived to tell him his father had died in a crash in Anchorage.

“At first I thought they had the wrong person, it was a farce,” Aaron said. After realizing the truth of what happened, he called his brother, sister, mother and his father’s close friends to break the news.

“I’m sure his occupants got bored with hearing how much he loved his family,” Aaron said of his father's customers.

“My dad’s main passion and what he was eventually trying to get to was becoming a full-time author,” he continued. “He was a historian out of college, out of the University of Oregon and UCLA.”

Orton says that his father had driven a taxi as a way to make money, but also as a way to socialize.

“At night times he found he had the best conversations and the most unique people,” Orton said. “He would then write during the day.”

Orton says his father was the author of several published novels, and was looking to move down to Oregon next year.

“We’ve lost too many, really, too many,” said Kim Pavy, the dispatch director at Yellow Cab. “It’s sad, it’s frustrating, it’s devastating to his family and his friends, this man had a life.”

Pavy describes knowing Orton as a “great guy and a good cab driver.”

She says he was a safe driver who loved to talk about “BS” about the job. In the years working with him, Pavy says she had never received a report of dangerous driving or a complaint from a passenger against Orton.

Pavy received a call around 1:30 a.m. Sunday that a bad crash had taken place involving a Yellow Cab. She said it was far from the first time that had happened.

In her 27 years in the industry, Pavy says she had known taxi drivers who were assaulted, robbed, thrown in their own trunks and even killed. In one 18 month period, she describes knowing of six taxi drivers who had lost their lives.

As holiday season approaches, Pavy has a message for drivers: “Please don’t drive impaired. Call a cab, call a friend, anything. Just don’t drive impaired.”

Renee Oistad, a spokesperson with the Anchorage Police Department, says APD is still investigating whether the driver of the Mitsubishi Mirage had consumed alcohol or drugs.

A charging decision would only likely be made once toxicology results came back, Oistad said.

Aaron Orton says he and his brother are waiting for the end of the investigation before making a judgement on what happened Sunday morning.