I was Garrett’s mentor when he joined The Pokémon Company International back in 2021 and that mentorship quickly grew into friendship.  I was always impressed with his desire to learn, grow, and push boundaries whenever possible.  His desire to both improve himself and the areas he worked on was quite infectious and I recall pleasant memories of working with him to improve the testing frameworks we had built together.

I left TPCi in 2022 for role at Apple but only stayed in that role for one year before returning to TPCi.  I remember coming back and catching up on the work I had left behind and being absolutely blown away by how much further along and further advanced the framework was.  He drove the efforts on that project to new and absolutely incredible heights beyond where I had imagined it going.  I recall excitedly reaching out to him asking him to explain the incredible feat him and his team accomplished and he was all too eager to talk about it.  We spent a couple hours talking about it, catching up, and genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

That passion he had for the work he did never wavered, he impressed me when I first met him and continued to impress me long after our official mentorship ended.  He was brilliant, shining, and so incredibly talented.  He truly inspired me to and unknowingly encouraged me to continue to bring my own passion and excitement to the work I do.  I will miss him incredibly and I am ever grateful that he was in my life, even if it was ever so brief.

My condolences to Garrett's family.  

I was a work colleague of his.  He joined our team in 2021, my first interactions with him were over work communications, we were all still working from home and virtual around that time.  A few months later I met him in person when I delivered him a gift, a drinking glass with an engraved logo of the team he had joined.  Throughout 2022, we began working more closely, supporting each other’s projects and efforts.  Over that summer we got together for couple rounds of disc golfing and he made it out to a pumpkin carving event we had in the fall.  In 2023, we started seeing each other regularly in office and continued bonding and building our professional relationship.

I am deeply saddened over the loss of Garrett.  He was intelligent, humorous, thoughtful, kind spirited, joyous, and an absolute pleasure to be around.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.”

Garrett was a great friend. When you talked with him he listened and cared, he wouldn't ignore you or brush you off. He was good at doing the little things that help you feel included. A fun memory of that is at one point when I hadn't known him for super long, we were eating lunch in the hallway outside the band room and he was eating a peanut butter and pickle sandwich, and I could not be convinced that that combination of flavors could taste good. The next day he showed up and had brought two peanut butter and pickle sandwiches--one for him, and one for me! I was so caught of guard by him doing something so nice for me--if I was eating my lunch and someone else thought it was weird food, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to bring some to share the next day. But he really cared about sharing things that he liked, even it was something as small as a type of sandwich. Well at that point, I was like now I have to try the sandwich haha. I ate it and it was actually super good, and I've been making peanut butter and pickle sandwiches ever since! It's a funny story, but at the same time that little act of kindness really did make an impact on me.

It was fun to be in calculus and physics classes with him because he was always trying to really understand things, and thinking outside the box to find solutions, which led to some creative methods. I remember one time we were talking about solving integrals, and he was like "Well why not just use the sploosh method?" I was like well what's that? He responded, you just look at the curve on the graph within the bounds you're integrating, and whatever shape it is, you imagine if it was water and kind of just splooshed down to a flat line, and then just multiply the height of the line by the width between the bounds and there's your integral. I myself didn't have audacity to think of a method to integrate that wasn't in the textbook, but he did and that led to lots of useful ideas--if you can integrate by the sploosh method, you definitely have a better understanding of what integrals actually are than someone who doesn't go beyond memorizing rules for manipulating equations haha.

In band he was committed and on board, ready for anything. In all my memories of him from band he was active, doing something and all in. I remember one year I played the piano for a few songs and sat to the side of the French horn section, and they were just this amazing firehose of pure brass power. Not in an out of control way, but definitely in a way where you felt it in your bones. In marching band it seemed like his energy was inexhaustible, and people like that really make a difference when it's hot and sweaty and it's been a long day--or when it's been raining for two weeks and you're rehearsing in the mud again haha. He was inspiring.

Garrett actually also helped me find my first summer job. I was looking for work but I needed a job where I could leave before the end of the summer for band camp, and he told me how he and Anna were picking strawberries and raspberries down at Koch farms in Newberg, and said I could join them. That kind of friendliness and reaching out to share ideas and help was just who Garrett was. I did end up working there with them, and he and Anna were really nice and drove up to my house (which was in the opposite direction from Newberg from their house) every morning at like 5:30 to pick me up and give me a ride down there. I have lots of good memories of listening to wacky early morning jazz on 89.1 FM in the car as we drove, and they also introduced me to amazing orchestral renditions of Legend of Zelda music.

Garrett's outlook on life, his curiosity about the world and readiness to jump in and explore it, and his kindness towards other people and excitement in sharing what he found has made a lasting impact on me. He's once of the friends I'll always remember and be grateful for.