BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — The 19-year-old son of a former YouTube executive passed away last week at the UC Berkeley campus where he lived, officials and a relative disclosed.
The university confirmed that Marco Troper, a Berkeley freshman, was discovered unresponsive Tuesday afternoon at the university’s Clark Kerr Campus. Troper was subsequently declared deceased by emergency responders from the Berkeley Fire Department, the university stated.
Esther Wojcicki, the mother of the former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, expressed in a Facebook post that the family is “overwhelmed beyond comprehension” by the loss of her 19-year-old grandson, Troper.
Susan Wojcicki was the CEO of YouTube from 2014 until 2023. Currently, she is in an advisory role to Google and Google-parent Alphabet.
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“In 1998, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page rented Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California and developed Google’s search engine there,” Forbes says. “She was hired in 1999 as Google employee number 16, and worked on everything from AdSense and Google Analytics to Google Books and Google Images.”
Moreover, there were no indications of foul play, and the Alameda County coroner’s office is conducting an investigation. It will ascertain the cause of death, as per Janet Gilmore, the university’s senior director of strategic communications.
“Marco was the most kind, loving, intelligent, enjoyable, and stunning human being,” the grandmother’s post remarked Wednesday. “He was just embarking on his second semester of his freshman year at UC Berkeley majoring in mathematics and was genuinely enjoying it.”
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“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,” she continued. “Marco’s life was cut too short. And we are all devastated, thinking about all the opportunities and life experiences that he will miss and we will miss together. Marco, we all love you and miss you more than you will ever know.”
A request for additional commentary was dispatched to Esther Wojcicki on Sunday. In addition to his mother and grandmother, Marco is survived by his father, Dennis Troper, and four siblings.
The cause of his death was not revealed. Esther Wojcicki, Troper’s grandmother, believes he died of a drug overdose. “He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what was in it. One thing we do know, it was a drug,” she told the San Francisco outlet SFGATE.
“He was everything you could have wished for in a son and a grandson. He was destined to make a difference. It’s heartbreaking,” she said.
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Furthermore, Esther said Troper’s loved ones “want to prevent this from happening to any other family.” “Tragedy is very hard to sustain,” she said. “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.”
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