Every parent fears it.
The 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was discovered dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose last week, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki. Wojcicki revealed the news on Facebook several days earlier, saying, “Tragedy hit my family yesterday. My loving 19-year-old grandson, Marco Troper, died yesterday. What a disaster for our family! Marco was the kindest, smartest, funniest, and most attractive. He was liking his second semester of math at UC Berkeley as a freshman. His Stern Hall dorm and Zeta Psi fraternity mates helped him succeed academically. He told us numerous anecdotes about his Berkeley life and friends at home.
There was no evidence of foul play, and UC Berkeley spokesman Janet Gilmore said the death is under investigation.
After her grandson died, Esther Wojcicki told the Palo Alto Daily, “College kids, especially freshmen and sophomores, experiment with everything. I guess this experiment failed.” She told the San Francisco Chronicle: “He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what it was. We know it was a drug.”
After nine years as CEO of the Alphabet-owned company, Wojcicki said in a blog post that she had “decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.”
Former YouTube CPO Neal Mohan has led the company since.
I never interviewed Wojcicki when she was a top CEO. I recall seeing her at a Fortune event in Aspen in 2015 as she addressed common questions about how she balanced a demanding profession with five children. Later that day, brothers Ari and Rahm Emanuel ridiculed her interviewer, experienced reporter Adam Lashinsky, for not asking them about their children. As a working mother of two children with a less demanding profession at the time, I was also wondering how Wojcicki, who gave birth to her youngest child shortly before the event, managed it all.
She did not fight the question. After saying, “‘You’re pretty busy’ is maybe the short answer,’” she linked her children to Google’s development phases. I adore kids, employment, and construction to some extent. Like kids, undertakings are fulfilling. Building businesses is fulfilling, and I like both.”
I feel terrible for Wojcicki and her family, which includes 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, Susan and Anne’s sister Janet, a pediatrics professor at UCSF, and their mother Esther, a renowned educator who has written extensively on raising successful children.
As expected, Esther Wojcicki told the SF Chronicle that the family is engaging with the press to “prevent this from happening to any other family.”
“Tragedy is very hard to sustain,” she told the Chronicle. “It makes you want to stay in a closet forever. But the essential thing is that we need to keep going to see how we can assist others so no more kids end up like Marco.”
Presumably, his death is causing much discussion. After hearing about it late yesterday, I told my children about the risks of today’s medications, how valuable life is, and that everyone is vulnerable to disaster.
