When Ethan Lee graduated from Palm Desert High School recently, he had a long list of people on his mind who helped him get there.
There were the classmates he led through rallies and homecoming events as president of the student council, then the teammates he trained beside in cross country and track and field.
There is also Alexander Yang, one of his best friends, who died in October after battling lymphoma.
Honoring Alex
Lee’s senior year began with a funeral. His grandfather died the week before the 2025-26 school year started, just as Palm Desert High’s student council was preparing for its first rally. Lee attended his funeral on the second day of school, then returned to campus to help set up the rally.
“It became this point where I realized the easiest way for me to cope would be to force myself to work,” he said.
Two months later, he also lost one of his closest friends to cancer.
He had met Alex Yang in seventh grade, after transferring to Palm Desert Charter Middle School during the early COVID-19 pandemic when distance learning made it harder to form new friendships. They traded social media handles, bonded over video games, and later over their rigorous honors and Advanced Placement classes in high school, as well as their similar Korean American backgrounds.
“He knew a lot more Korean than I did, and he always gave me stuff for that,” Lee said with a laugh. “He was an older brother to me. He was really like my first friend, my day one. He was always someone I looked up to.”
When Yang got sick, the friendship that had started during a remote learning environment returned, in some ways, to screens. Lee and his friends played video games with Yang on late nights, called when they could, sent TikToks to one another — anything to try to maintain their friendship even as treatment and school made those shared moments harder to pencil in.
They later helped start a GoFundMe fundraiser for his family. Yang was overwhelmed, Lee recalled, by how widely classmates, teachers and community members donated, including people he barely knew.
“I can’t even imagine how in shock (he) would have been to see how many people came to support him,” Lee said.
In October, Yang shared that he was being moved back to Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital from hospice care. Lee and his friends planned to go visit him over the weekend, but as his condition worsened, Yang told them it might be better to come earlier.
Palm Desert High releases its students early on Wednesdays, so after school, they drove straight to the hospital. They knew Yang might be heavily medicated or unable to recognize them, but they still hoped they could see him at least once more. When they arrived, Yang’s uncle shared that their friend would likely not make it through the night.
“We were just sitting there, just crying. I (saw) friends who aren’t religious with their heads down, just praying,” Lee said. “It was weird. I felt like I couldn’t move. I just remember that feeling.”
They later learned Yang died shortly after they had arrived at the hospital.
Long before that night, Lee and his friends had asked Yang how he wanted to be remembered. It felt like an intrusive question, Lee said, and one they first hesitated to ask. But Yang told them he was glad they had brought it up. He did not want his death “to be a bother” or for his loved ones to dwell in sadness. Rather, he wanted a celebration.
Lee and his friends later shared that conversation with Yang’s family.
And so, at his celebration of life in November, Lee remembered looking out a packed room. Principal Sarit Saig, who also attended, said the stories from Yang’s friends helped her understand why students described him as “the glue” of their group, a role Lee and others would keep honoring through the rest of their senior year.
“To me, Alex has and always will be someone who was very dedicated. He was a role model. Gosh, the more and more I hear about his achievements, even after his passing, it’s like, wow, I will always look up to him,” Lee said. “He’s someone I always carry with me.”
True to his word, Lee continued to keep Yang’s memory present throughout his senior year, from a moment of silence at a football game to taking prom photos by a tree dedicated to Yang at First Tee — Coachella Valley, a youth golf organization just across from the high school, where they wrapped a tie around the trunk in his honor.
“The heart that he showed and the leadership that he showed leading with his heart is something that I think says a whole lot about Ethan,” Saig said. “I just couldn’t be more proud of him. He really led our campus through a hard time.”
On graduation night, Lee honored Yang again. Before beginning his speech as student council president, he asked the crowd to take a moment of silence for his friend, “one of the most impactful seniors of this year.”
‘The right path’
The year had finally caught up with Lee, who said he later felt burned out after months of pushing forward without fully grieving the deaths of his grandfather and friend. He still had a track tournament and his engineering capstone project to complete.
“It was just this motion of, I just need to get through the next week, the next month, the next semester,” he said.
After spring break, Lee focused on what he could still tend to — the late assignments, slipping grades and the “senioritis” that had set in — what he called “damage control.” He finished the school year by committing to the University of California, San Diego, with the goal of studying bioengineering.
“I realized I did my best,” Lee said. “And if that’s not good enough, then I can’t ask for anything else.”
Although UC San Diego was the school he had long pictured for himself, the admissions process also gave him reason to take a late chance on Princeton University. After an admissions officer visited Palm Desert High, Lee decided to apply to the Ivy League and he was even invited to interview. The conversation, expected to last about 20 minutes, stretched past an hour — a detail his principal later brought up as a point of pride, and as a sign of how naturally Lee connects with people.
When decisions arrived, Lee said it was difficult to “erase the sting of rejection.” However, UC San Diego was not a consolation. It was the campus he had loved after touring it, the school his sister is attending and the college his friends reminded him he had once talked about as his dream.
Then his mother showed him a photo she had taken while their family was visiting his sister: It was of Lee and his grandfather, just the two of them, in San Diego.
“My mom was like, ‘You know, he wanted you to go to that school,'” he said. “From there, that’s when I kind of felt like I’ve been on the right path.”
Lee is looking forward to joining his sister in San Diego, where he hopes to share more of the life she has built there — her singing, the music she is working on and the independence he has come to admire as they have grown older.
“As we’ve gotten older, we’ve both kind of grown to understand each other. I’m not just the annoying kid brother and she’s not just this overbearing older sister. We’re in this together,” he said. “That’s always something my parents always tell us, that if something happens, it’s just (us) two.”
And, of course, Lee is ready to live by the beach. He wants to learn how to surf from his father, who picked up the sport between classes in Santa Barbara. He also plans to start college the way he finished high school, by making the effort to stay close to the people in his life.
‘Passing on the flame’
Even after a long year marked by grief, Lee kept saying yes to new experiences.
His restless curiosity and openness took Lee to a friend’s ballet class when she needed a partner, as well as to pilates and rock climbing with friends who took him along. He learned how to perform Tinikling, a traditional Filipino dance, for a Mass, even though he is “proudly Korean,” he jokingly said. Before cross country races, he joined some of his teammates in sprinkling glitter in his hair as a reminder not to take himself too seriously.
“I love to have fun. I want to enjoy life and what I’m doing. Something I learned a lot this year is to … just go for it,” Lee said. “That’s the energy that I plan on bringing to my post-high school life — encouraging others to not even just take risks, but (to) take advantage of the opportunities we have because there are going to be friendships you make that are going to last forever.”
His willingness to keep reaching for joy is what he hopes others carry on at Palm Desert High and in his community. He thinks about the runners he calls his “littles,” the children he helped teach after earning his black belt in taekwondo and the Aztecs who will take over the rallies, dances and school traditions. And he doesn’t need them to remember him as the best at any of it.
“Maybe the whole point is to pass on the flame,” Lee said.
He did just that in his graduation speech, leaving the class of 2026 with a message from Yang.
“Life your life to the fullest, try not to have any regrets. Enjoy doing the things you love,” he said, quoting Yang. “Create new relationships. Don’t be afraid to go on that date or drive your first car, things like that.”
Yang’s sentiment was the way Lee had described graduation — as a milestone shared with the friends and classmates he led, learned from, laughed with and grieved beside. Together, they made up “every piece of my own mosaic that I get to call uniquely mine.”
“It will be a mix of nostalgia,” Lee said, “but also hope for the future.”
Jennifer Cortez covers education in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at jennifer.cortez@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert High graduate navigated senior year through friend’s death
Reporting by Jennifer Cortez, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
