It was an appropriately dreary December afternoon, and I was on my way to have lunch with Bill over at Apple. As I was about to turn on to DeAnza, Kiersten called me. “Larry just called an all hands meeting at noon, ” she informed. She didn’t say it was required, but on the other hand, meetings usually aren’t scheduled to start in 15 minutes if they aren’t important. I called Bill to reschedule and headed back to Yahoo!.
The conference room was all a flurry before Larry came in. What could it be? I joked with some coworkers, “Maybe we bought Google…” After I realized how asinine that was, a coworker rebuffed, “or maybe they bought us…”
After a few minutes of whispering speculation, Larry began the meeting with, “I have some tragic news to report…”
Everything stopped.
We now new that it had nothing to do with business. This was personal.
Now, the way I tend to deal with this types of stress-ors is to immediately tighten up every muscle in my body. In my mind, I start to gather a list everyone it could be. I sit, like a computer waiting for input, so that I could serve up an appropriate response. I actively listen for keywords to narrow the list.
“..been here about three months…” My body loosened a bit. It wasn’t anyone that I’ve had a really long-standing relationship with.
“Santa Monica…” I relax a bit more. I don’t know that many people in Santa Monica, so the list gets shorter.
“Shari…” In a spit second, I start to think of all the Sharis I know. I’m reconciling the different spellings of Sharry, Cheri, Shari, Sherry… I get to the Sh variety when Larry continues…
“Sakahara.”
After about a second, all of the keywords and data points collided into an image of Shari Sakahara,, the intern that I worked with during my stint in Yahoo! Photos. My body clenched up and I literally jumped. Kiersten noticed it and nodded as if to say, “See, I told you it was serious…”
Larry explained that she was hit by a car while waiting at a bus stop in LA and gave us details of her memorial services and family contacts. After he dismissed the meeting, Larry and I briefly sat with Patrick, who was consoling Sally. Two of our other team members, Jeff and Sue, were not at work that day, and Becky was on a plane to visit her folks. Our former design manager, Suzanne, had left the company and was in India. It’s interesting that after a tragedy like this, our natural response is to take a roll call and make sure that everyone is accounted for and informed.
Shari had worked with me on the Yahoo! Photos Team while still an intern, and she was quite simply amazing. It seemed that Design had consumed her and influenced her every move. In addition to making her own clothes, she created this little line of hoodies called Helvetica. She traced the word Helvetica (set in, well, Helvetica) and stiched them to sweatshirts and sold them online and at boutiques. Her line of hoodies also included cursors of Photoshop tools (e.g. crop, rubberstamp, etc). Okay, perhaps they were a bit esoteric, but they were cute if you understood them.
Shari was an intern, but make no mistake– in no way was she inferior to us. In fact, she really challenged us to go beyond what was possible. She worked up a concept where you could put little stickies (e.g. pirate and SCUBA paraphernalia) on photos. Wow! Such a simple and doable thing that we didn’t think of! It was that kind of freshness that made her such a rock star. We go through piles of resumes all the time, and in those piles, we are lucky if one has a Shari in it. She was a rock star.
She was just beginning; who knows what she could have done? No one will ever know. That’s the real tragedy here. She was only 24.
After her internship, she secured a full time gig with Yahoo! Media Group in Santa Monica and was really excited.
It’s a really eerie thought, but what happens when your online haunts outlive you? (Sensitive Type, Flickr, 360). Do these online assets make you somewhat immortal? Will they still be there in 30 years? Will it still say that she’s 23? (she was actually 24 when she died, but she never got around to updating that fact in 360. It’s really a new question to be pondered in the age of personal media. I now understand why they call them “haunts.”
A rather strong storm front was rolling into town on the day Shari’s memorial service in Sacramento, and Tina and I were discussing the wisdom of me traveling over a hundred miles in potential hazardous road conditions to attend. While not minimizing the magnitude of this tragedy, Tina questioned why I would be so strong-headed as to go all the way out to Sacramento, on one of the worst weather systems in recent memory, to attend the memorial service of a coworker.
After pondering for several moments, small eye puddles collected and I explained the following.
I have three daughters. Three beautiful daughters that will require appropriately large doses of guidance, love, encouragement and discipline. Three daughters whose love for me will ride a roller coaster that will erratically navigate the spectrum of “Daddy, I love you to the moon and back” and “Daddy, you are my hero,” to “Daddy, can you please drop me off a block away” and “I hate, you Daddy (even though you just bought me a pony).” Three daughters who will rely on me to serve as a role model, career counselor, punching bag and teacher‚Äì responsibilities that I don’t take lightly.
Inside of each of my girls, I see a little bit of Shari or at least the potential to be like her, and If one of my girls turns out to be like Shari, I would give myself a hearty pat on the back for a job well-done. Her death, if even for but a moment, made me feel like I had lost a daughter. It was only then that I could even fathom what her parents could be going through. I felt like I needed to express these thought with them directly. I wanted to let them know what a great job they did with her.
Shari’s gone, but we need to keep her always in our memory and reflect on her passion for life and it’s unexplored avenues. This might be a bit melodramatic, but perhaps when we feel that we’ve designed ourselves into a corner by throwing up unnecessary constraints or gotten into a rut, we should ask ourselves, “How might Shari approach this?”
Editorial Note: I wish that I could say that the rather large gap between posts was by design. It wasn’t. Something inside me wouldn’t allow me to address the trivialities of life without first expressing my feelings in regards to Shari’s death. The large gap does, however, have the unintended side benefit of underscoring the this post’s personal importance and might give readers the wherewithall to make it all the way through.
I truly appreciate all the the gentle (and not-so-gentle) nudges that I’ve gotten from Tina and friends like Tom, Ted, Bryce, Kerry, Erin, Kiersten and a whole host of others. While not promising anything, I’ll do my best to never let this happen again.
Logo blatently and unapologetically stolen from 
