It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki. The news broke widely yesterday, although Wojcicki posted the news on Facebook several days ago, Writing: “Tragedy struck my family yesterday. My beloved grandson Marco Tropper, 19, died yesterday. Our family is devastated beyond comprehension. Marco was the most kind, loving, intelligent, fun and beautiful person. He was just starting the second semester of his freshman year at UC Berkeley majoring in math and he was really enjoying it. He had a strong community of friends from his dorm in Stern Hall and his Zeta Psi fraternity and thrived academically. At home, he would tell us endless stories of his life and friends at Berkeley.”
UC Berkeley spokeswoman Janet Gilmore said there was no indication of foul play and that the death investigation is ongoing.
Esther Wojcicki told the Palo Alto Daily about her grandson’s death: “Kids in college, especially freshmen and sophomores, experiment with everything. I think this was an experiment gone wrong.” She told the San Francisco Chronicle separately: “He swallowed a drug and we don’t know what was in it. One thing we know, it was a drug.”
Wojcicki stepped down as CEO of the Alphabet-owned subsidiary a year ago, writing in a blog post that after nine years in the role, she “decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects. passionate about.”
Neal Mohan, then YouTube’s chief product officer, has run the organization ever since.
I didn’t get a chance to interview Wojcicki while she held one of the most prestigious CEO positions in the world. I remember being blown away by her appearance at a Fortune event in Aspen in 2015 as answered questions that she was regularly asked, focusing on how she juggled a full-time job with also being a mother of five. Her interviewer, veteran reporter Adam Lashinsky, was teased in an interview later that day with brothers Ari and Rahm Emanuel, who noted that Lashinsky didn’t ask them about their children at all. But honestly, as a working mother of two and a much less demanding job at the time, I was also curious how Wojcicki — who gave birth to her youngest child shortly before the event — handled it all.
Notably, he did not push back on the question. Instead, she talked about relating her different children to different stages of Google’s development, after first replying: “You’re pretty busy” is probably the short answer. I love children, I love work and I think on some level I love creating things and building. And like children they are very rewarding projects. Construction companies are also rewarding and I love doing both.”
My heart now breaks for Wojcicki and her family, which is known far beyond their Silicon Valley home and includes 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. Susan and Anne’s sister, Janet, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. and their mother Esther Wojcicki, herself a famous educator who has written extensively about how to raise successful children.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Esther Wojcicki told the SF Chronicle that the family is talking to the press in part to “prevent this from happening to any other family.”
“Tragedy is very hard to sustain,” he told the Chronicle. “It makes you want to hide in a closet and never come out. But I think the main thing is that we have to push forward to see what we can do to help other people so that there are no more kids who end up like Marco.”
Obviously, his death has already sparked widespread debate. After hearing this late yesterday, I reminded my own children of the dangers of today’s drugs, how painfully precious life is, and that no one is immune to disaster.
