WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — While grabbing lunch at Listen’s community dining hall in on Thursday, David Reffitt wiped tears from his eyes as he remembered his friend, Rick Riff.

“He was part of our homeless community out here,” said Reffitt, who knew Riff for about nine years. “We’re like a little family.”

Last week, Riff was found dead underneath a bridge spanning the White River between the Bugbee Senior Center and the Co-op Food Store, an area frequently used as an encampment by people who are unhoused. “We all had dinner together and then the next day he was gone,” said Reffitt.

On Feb. 27, Hartford police responded to an emergency call at 6:48 p.m. about a man found under the downtown bridge.

As of Friday afternoon, the cause of Riff’s death had not been determined, police said. But “there is no reason to suspect foul play,” Chief Connie Kelley told the Valley News earlier in the week.

Riff’s body was sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Burlington for an autopsy.

Riff is at least the third death of an unhoused person in Hartford in less than four years.

Jason Moots’ body was found by police in a homeless encampment not far from Sykes Mountain Avenue on Sept. 27, 2021. An autopsy indicated that he had died of an accidental fentanyl overdose. He was 45.

On Jan 17, 2023, Jessica Morehouse’s body was discovered by workers at the Casella Waste Systems recycling processing center on Route 4. A death certificate, filed after an autopsy was completed, indicated that Morehouse, a mother of three girls, was inside a dumpster when it was “emptied into and compacted by (a) recycling truck” that was making its rounds outside businesses and other sites in Hartford that morning.

Riff, 54, had throat cancer and was not in good health, family and friends said in interviews this week. “He could hardly breathe,” Tiffany Kangas, a longtime friend of Riff’s, said while eating lunch at Listen’s dining hall. “He was gasping for air all the time.”

To Kangas’ knowledge, Riff was not undergoing cancer treatments at the time of his death. She had known Riff for almost 20 years and lived across the hall from him in a building on Christian Street in Hartford in 2010.

“He had a tough exterior on the streets but he wasn’t like that,” Kangas said. “He was a big teddy bear.”

Riff grew up in North Stratford, N.H., with two brothers, Brian and Shane, and a sister, Shelli. His parents, Albert Riff of Bloomfield, Vt., and Barbara LeBlanc of Canaan, Vt., are still alive, Riff’s daughter, Jessica Willey, said via Facebook Messenger.

“None of his family knew he was homeless,” said Willey, 33. “My grandmother and grandfather went looking for him a while back and had no luck finding him.”

In addition to Willey, who lives in Lancaster, N.H., Riff had four other adult children.

“We had a rough relationship near the end, but I loved him very much,” Riff’s 23-year-old son, Trevor Riff, of Wells River, said via Facebook Messenger.

Trevor Riff said he lived with his father while attending Oxbow High School in Bradford, Vt., until he and his dad had a “falling out” senior year. Trevor moved out. Willey said she lived with her dad full-time when she was a young kid, and then periodically after her parents split up when she was 8.

“He was hard headed but he cared about his family,” Trevor Riff said. “He just had his own struggles like everybody does.”

Riff bounced around Vermont and New Hampshire for decades, living in several Upper Valley towns, including Windsor, Bradford and Corinth, usually with a roof over his head. He owned a tattoo shop in Littleton, N.H., about 20 years ago.

“Tattooing was his dream,” Kangas said.

Besides art, Riff loved NASCAR, fishing, playing cards and music. “He also could play the drums and really enjoyed that,” Willey said.

Riff worked at Wendy’s in West Lebanon from at least 2016 until December of 2021, according to the restaurant’s payroll records.

He became homeless when he got too sick to work, Kangas said. “He didn’t want to be a burden on his family so he stayed in a tent or where he could,” she said.

Riff volunteered at Listen’s community dining hall, meal co-manager Sherise Simpson said during lunchtime on Thursday. Simpson described Riff as “a really nice guy” and said he would often nap in the dining hall between shifts.

Gwen Williams, a service coordinator at Upper Valley Haven — a White River Junction nonprofit that provides services and shelter for homeless community members — said Riff was familiar to the staff.

“He was looking at housing options wondering if he might be able to get into a hotel,” Williams said. “He had some close friends who were also outside with him. Many times he had expressed that’s where he’s mo st comfortable.”

 Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at eroth wells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.