It’s each father or mother’s worst nightmare.
Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was discovered lifeless at UC Berkeley of an obvious drug overdose, based on his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki. The information broke extensively yesterday, although Wojcicki posted the information to Fb a number of days in the past, writing: “Tragedy hit my family yesterday. My beloved grandson Marco Troper, age 19 passed away yesterday. Our family is devastated beyond comprehension. Marco was the most kind, loving, smart, fun and beautiful human being. He was just getting started on his second semester of his freshman year at UC Berkeley majoring in math and was truly loving it. He had a strong community of friends from his dorm at Stern Hall and his fraternity Zeta Psi and was thriving academically. At home, he would tell us endless stories of his life and friends at Berkeley.”
UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore has stated there have been no indicators of foul play and that an investigation into the dying is underway.
Esther Wojcicki advised the Palo Alto Day by day of her grandson’s passing, “Kids in college, especially freshmen and sophomores, experiment with everything. I think this was an experiment that went wrong.” She individually advised the San Francisco Chronicle: “He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what was in it. One thing we do know, it was a drug.”
Wojcicki stepped down as CEO of the Alphabet-owned subsidiary one yr in the past, writing in a weblog publish that after 9 years within the function, she’d “decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about.”
Neal Mohan, then YouTube’s chief product officer, has run the group since.
I didn’t have the chance to interview Wojcicki whereas she held one of the crucial prestigious CEO posts on this planet. I do keep in mind being captivated by her look at a Fortune occasion in Aspen again in 2015 as she answered questions that she was requested routinely, centering on how she juggled an all-encompassing job with additionally being a mom to 5 youngsters. Her interviewer, veteran reporter Adam Lashinsky, was teased in an interview later that very same day with brothers Ari and Rahm Emanuel, who famous that Lashinsky didn’t ask them in any respect about their youngsters. However in truth, as a working mom of two youngsters and a significantly less-demanding job on the time, I used to be additionally curious how Wojcicki — who gave delivery to her youngest baby simply forward of the occasion — dealt with all of it.
Notably, she didn’t push again on the query. As a substitute, she talked about associating her completely different youngsters with completely different levels of Google’s progress, after first responding, “‘You’re pretty busy’ is maybe the short answer. I love kids, I love work and I think at some level I just love creating things and building. And like kids are very rewarding projects. Building companies is rewarding too and I enjoy doing both.”
My coronary heart now breaks for Wojcicki and her household, which is understood far past their dwelling in Silicon Valley and consists of 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, Susan and Anne’s sister Janet, a professor of pediatrics on the College of California, San Francisco, and Esther Wojcicki, a renown educator who has written extensively on how one can elevate profitable youngsters.
Maybe unsurprisingly, Esther Wojcicki advised the SF Chronicle that the household is talking with the press partially to “prevent this from happening to any other family.”
“Tragedy is very hard to sustain,” advised the Chronicle. “It makes you want to hide in a closet and never come out. But I think the main thing is that we need to push forward to see what we can do to help other people so there won’t be any other kids who end up like Marco.”
Presumably, his dying is already sparking widespread conversations. After listening to of it late yesterday, I reminded my very own youngsters of the hazards of medication, how painfully treasured life is, and that nobody is proof against calamity.
