Stephen Yost, Aide to District Attorney, Dies at 44

Stephen Dale Yost, the top administrative officer at the district attorney’s office, died Sunday of cancer. He was 44.

“I depended on his wisdom, his experience and his good judgment on a daily basis,” Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. said Monday. “His death is a huge loss to all of us personally and to the office itself.”

Yost, a San Diego State University graduate, joined the district attorney’s office in 1976 as an administrative assistant. In 1981, he was named chief of administrative services and put in charge of the office budget of about $50 million annually. The office employs about 700 people--lawyers, investigators and support staff.

Richard D. Huffman, now a justice on a state appeal court, was chief deputy district attorney when Yost was hired. The two men worked together for several years.

“It was a delight to watch him grow professionally, from what he called a bean counter--a product of the bureaucratic movement--into a competent, decision-making executive,” Huffman said.

Yost is survived by his wife, Debbie, of San Diego; his father, Jacob Yost, of Orlando, Fla.; his mother, Fay Wotters of San Diego, and a sister, Jacqueline Primeaux McWay of La Mesa.