WARWICK — As Timothy Packhem prepared in recent days to take his driver’s test, he toyed with a tough decision: when he gets his license, should he become an organ donor?

It was a scary thought, he admitted to his mother, but he loved the idea of helping others.

This week, his parents were forced to make that choice for him. Seventeen-year-old Tim died Tuesday after a skateboarding accident.

The donation of Tim Packhem’s organs saved seven lives.

“A neighbor who had a transplant told me, when someone gives you the gift of life there are no words to describe that. If there’s something that defined Tim, it was his sense of life,” his mother, Paula, said yesterday, smiling through tears. “Those families are going to have a life now.”

Packhem, an honors student, son of a Warwick firefighter and nephew of Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice and former Warwick Mayor Francis X. Flaherty, died in what appears to be a freak skateboarding accident. Packhem was an avid athlete, but he wasn’t a skateboarder, his parents said.

Warwick Police Maj. Joseph H. Tavares said Packhem was horsing around with friends on Paine Street on Monday, near Warwick Neck, when he jumped on a friend’s board and sped down a hill, out of sight.

When he didn’t reappear, they went looking for him and spotted Packhem lying in the street, an off-duty police officer who lives in the neighborhood administering first aid to him.

It appears he lost control of the board, fell and hit his head. The officer, whom the police have not identified, was on his way home when he found the boy on the ground, having a seizure, Warwick Police Chief Col. Stephen M. McCartney said yesterday.

Packhem was taken to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, where he died Tuesday afternoon, Tavares said.

The state medical examiner’s office has not yet determined the cause of Packhem’s death, though the police said there is no indication of foul play. Both McCartney and Tavares described the accident as a terrible tragedy. “It was just a tragic accident, and the boy was not wearing a helmet or protective gear,” Tavares said.

Gathered around the dining room table in their home on Capron Farm Drive yesterday, Packhem’s family said they, too, have no idea how or why the accident happened.

With no answers, they chose to focus instead on Tim — “Timbo” to his family — a boy they called a study in contradictions. He was a teenager as devoted to his campaign to be named class clown as he was to the youth ministry at his church, where he spent Friday nights mentoring younger children.

He was just as likely to tease his 26-year-old sister, Jessica, about the guys she was dating as he was to coax his 6-year-old sister, Hannah, into getting ready for school.

“Timbo” was the kind of teenager that parents loved and students wanted to be friends with, his family said, smiling at funny memories captured in candid shots of a boy who loved to have his photo taken, but would have hated the idea of being remembered in a posed yearbook shot.

William McCaffrey, the assistant principal at Warwick Veterans Memorial High School, where Packhem was a junior, described him as a youngster with a lot of character. “[Yesterday], I encountered a student who was upset about Tim’s death. I asked how he knew Tim, and he said, ‘I didn’t. Tim was in my homeroom class and when other students picked on me, Tim always talked to me. He was always a friend and he was always supportive,’ ” McCaffrey said. “You don’t find that in many kids.”

“He touched more lives in his 17 years than most people do in a lifetime,” his sister, Jessica, said yesterday.

Hundreds of students gathered under a tent outside the school last night for a candlelight vigil in Packhem’s memory. They shivered in the cold alongside Warwick firefighters, remembering the friend they said no one could take seriously for too long, not even at his own memorial. His was a huge personality, friend Justin Amaral said, which makes it even harder to imagine events such as the prom and graduation, or even school lunches, without him.

“Tim’s death is a terrible loss for his family, his wide circle of friends and anyone who had the good fortune to meet this fine, polite and gentle young man,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said. “Tim’s mother, Paula, is a longtime friend of mine and his dad, Tim, is one of our firefighters.”

The elder Timothy Packhem, a Warwick firefighter, was quiet yesterday as his family spoke about his son. “I’ve never felt sadness like this,” he finally said.

Hannah climbed into her father’s lap and hugged him. “I miss him,” she said softly.

“I know you do,” he told her. “We all miss him.”

With reports from projo.com Staff Writer Kate Bramson

cneedham@projo.com