It all started when…

2023 was a milestone year for me because it marks 10 years since I began my journey toward the career and very way of life I have today. 2013 was the year I went back to school and fell in love with journalism and graphic design. It was also the year I met my first friend at Citrus, Dillon Cooper.

There is just a small group of people who were there at the very beginning of my career in art and graphic design—Dillon was one

I first met Dillon in the summer of 2013. I was 27, and miserable. I graduated high school in '03 and a decade later, I felt I had fallen so far behind most people my age that I felt like a total and complete failure.

I decided to enroll back at my local community college and sign up for the beginning journalism class, COM101—that's where I met Dillon. We both got enrolled at Citrus to write about the things we loved—he with sports and me with music. By the end of that summer semester, Dillon and I were pretty much the only ones from class who found ourselves at the orientation for the campus newspaper, the Citrus College Clarion.

Dillon was the first friend I made in this new phase of my life. The phase where I would eventually fall in love with print design, and creating exciting visual art.

When I eventually became the Editor-in-Chief Dillon was my first Managing Editor—my second in command. Anyone who has known me/worked with me long enough knows I can be exhausting and insufferable at times. However maniacal and frustrating I was in my pursuit of getting us a General Excellence award, Dillon was always that grounded and fun part of the Clarion that most people look back fondly on.

He always had a very chill, laid-back approach that was a perfect counter-balance to my neurotic, obsessive, and annoyingly meticulous style. He always reminded me to exhale and have fun with this thing we were involved in (I'll always treasure our "Rocket Frog" laughing fit!)

After our time at the Clarion, we drifted in different directions but stayed in touch as best we could when he was in town. He was so excited when I told him I had gotten the job as the Art Director for KCRW—he could not stop telling me how proud he was and how happy it made him to hear I had finally "made it." Our COM101 selves never would've/could’ve believed it.

The night in June when I heard he had passed, I felt stunned. My heart sank. Since that night, there is not a day I don't think of him.

There have been nights since when I’ll sit in a booth at The Continental (our mutually favorite local dive) and imagine we’re having an exchange.

He’s laughing his big hearty laugh, hands covering his face as he lets out a long exaggerated “ BROOOOOOO” at the fact that it took him dying to get me to write something about our time in COM101 and the paths our lives took as a result of taking that summer class together. He always wanted me to get back into writing. He scans over these words, laughing and calling me dramatic but also appreciating that I’m writing from the heart about how special of a time those years at Citrus were and how fortunate I am to be doing what I do and to have made a career from it.

I'm convinced Dillon could've been an incredible sports writer. It came to him so naturally, in a way that I had hoped music writing would’ve come to me in my early Citrus days. He wrote with such a passion for whatever—whether it was about the Dodgers or whatever Citrus teams were in season play—that you could feel in his words. You wouldn’t feel talked at or like it was some kid ranting about stats and scores.

As we are sitting there in the booth, I can imagine him

It's one of my biggest regrets that I didn't push to get him to write for theLAnd or the San Dimas Community Post at the time.