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Cheeseburger, graduation and death
Around 4pm on the second Friday of June 1988, a Caltech student went to get dinner. His name was Evan Bak. In 1977 [sic] he arrived from Hawaii to be a frosh at Caltech. In 1988, 11 years later, he was a senior. He was quite smart. I and others chatted with him on many occasions and he could understand and take part in discussions. His issue was that if he was not interested in a subject, like a class he needed for his degree, he would do little or no study for it. Intermittently he would take and pass a class every term or so. He supported himself with various part time jobs on campus, like programming. By the time 1988 arrived, he was essentially a senior.
He was a member of an undergraduate co-ed house called Ricketts. A lot of his spare time was spent in Ricketts lounge, where there was a big TV and Scurves (members of the house) loitered around. Sometimes, as in his case, for years. Though the house had a custom of other long timers also being around.
He kept fit, garnering a black belt in karate. He would occasionally run the track behind the gym. In 1987 I was doing my regular 12 laps and he paced me. We finished in 22 minutes, which is a good run.
Back to that June 1988 Friday. He walked from Caltech to Colorado Boulevard and Hill Street, at Pasadena City College. (Figure 1.) He had done this hundreds of times. PCC had 20,000…
