IU sophomore Adrian Jimenez was like a tree, his aunt Suebrina Beck said. His branches stretched through his family, his classmates and his coworkers to form a network of people he loved and who loved him.
Many people have a lot of Facebook friends, but Beck said all of Jimenez’s 2,241 were genuine.
[Hoosiers commemorate IU sophomore's life with lantern vigil | IDS]
Many people are colorful, but Jimenez wore it in the form of his favorite pair of orange corduroy pants, as remembered by his sister Christina Joseph.
Many people say they listen to all sorts of music, but Jimenez really did. Joseph said Jimenez actually played everything on his WIUX show.
Jimenez was not like many people.
He once stole a baby mannequin hand from Target and surprised his aunt Sarajean Hayes by popping it out of his shirt sleeve when they got back to the car.
“He was going to be the crazy cat lady,” said his close friend Marissa Perez, remembering how Jimenez loved his cat, Boots.
Jimenez loved IU, the Media Living Learning Center he participated in last year, and his Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers, his mother Michelle Beck-Jimenez said.
Though Jimenez’s cousin Michael Gutierrez was older, he said he looked up to Jimenez for being himself and for working toward his dream to be a film director.
“He was going to show us up,” Beck said. “He was going to be the first one to graduate college.”
Outside of school, Jimenez liked to jam out at Panera Bread, where he worked with his mom.
One night, when IU sophomore and coworker Audrey Couch closed the store with Jimenez and his mother, she heard Beck-Jimenez’s classic Britney Spears-style music playing throughout the store. She looked over to see Jimenez twerking and singing along.
On the last night fellow IU sophomore and coworker Katie Souder worked with Jimenez, they were covering the drive-thru. A particularly rude customer began to anger Souder, so Jimenez took over and treated both Souder and the customer the way he treated everyone — with a smile.
“He was always so sweet, no matter who it was,” Souder said. “He would do anything for anybody, any time.”
He went as far as to give the shorts off of his body to his older brother’s girlfriend, Morgan Weakley, when she went boating with Jimenez’s family but didn’t have any swimming clothes.
Beyond his generosity, Jimenez got people to open up and do things they never would have done otherwise, Hayes said.
It was Labor Day when she last came to Bloomington, and Jimenez found out she had never shotgunned a beer.
“He was like, ‘Come on, let’s go,’” she said. “So me and him went to the back of the boat and he popped a beer open for me.”
But that beer was only one instance in a lifetime of getting people to step outside of their comfort zones.
“To be around him was just life,” Beck-Jimenez said. “You wanted to be better. You wanted to do better, because that’s how he made you feel.”
