Slouching in the passenger seat a full day of his summer AP Chemistry course, senior Randy Zhao’s entire summer quickly went into extreme shock. As his mom broke the news to him that his brother was just severely injured while on a service trip in rural China, Randy took to what he knew about how to cope: to keep his feelings to himself.

“Since we were far away, we had no idea what was going to happen to him,” Randy said. “He was in a very poor area volunteering so there wasn’t a lot of medical care he had access to and for a long time we weren’t sure how serious the situation was or whether or not he’d be okay. We had no family or anyone nearby at the time to take care of him and he had just gotten denied by a local hospital and we knew that he was he was in a pretty serious condition and my mom was freaking out.”

In the midst of scrambling to maintain contact with his brother and transport him to proper health care, Randy immediately turned to a lighthearted façade to cope.

“I think to me I sort of kept it on the inside I tried to joke about it a lot and say like, ‘Hey, my brother’s really stupid for smashing a window and cutting his arm open!’ You know on the outside I like to maintain some sort of happy, jovial, joking manner and that sort of helps me cope in a sense that if I try to trick myself into being happy I might end up being happy. I know my whole family was really stressed out and it bothered them that I didn’t seem to be bothered but in reality things like that really do bother me it’s just sometimes I don’t like to weigh down on other people by actively expressing sadness or whatever.”

After witnessing the way the incident impacted his family, his mom in particular, Randy realized that he played a role in the family much greater than just the youngest brother.

“I think when that happened my mom handled it very differently than I did, Randy said. “She was very much in need of someone’s reassurance constantly, and, for me, I sort of just like take things by myself and spend time alone. I sort of go into a little shelter and if something like that happens I don’t really communicate with anyone, and I think like at that time I realized that I had to be there for my mom. I sort of realized that reassuring my mom also helped me become reassured, and it felt good to lift someone up, but then, at the same time, I felt like pressure getting off myself too.”

As Randy’s close friends can attest to, Randy’s relationship with his mom is remarkably unique in its mutual dynamic of closeness and reliance.

There’s always that sort of weird hesitancy to be open with your parents about personal things,” Randy said. “It’s always that you’d rather talk to someone your own age or whatnot because you feel like they might understand you better. For the longest time, I didn’t really have that much to talk about with my mom I guess in the sense that nothing really drastically happened that affected both of us. It was either something happened at school for me and I would just talk to a friend about it or maybe something was going on at work for her. There was never something that affected both of us like my brother’s accident and that brought us together.”

The openness that Randy confided in after his brother’s accident translated itself into Randy’s overall disposition towards family and friends alike, allowing Randy to surround himself with connections stronger than he was ever able to find before.

“I think over the past year I sort of just realized that friendships and any relationships in general just come from effort from both parties, and so it’s really like for the longest time I sort of expected things to come and I think that’s like a major problem in thinking,” Randy said. “I was always expecting friends to want to talk to me. I was expecting things to come to me without having to work for them myself and I think in any friendship or relationship in general that’s like the worst thing you can think. There has to be that understanding that any relationship comes form effort from both sides, so I think that couples with my willingness to open up to more people. I’ve started putting a lot more effort into people I care about and people I want to care about me and I think that sort of manifested itself in stronger relationships with friends.”

Since the 6th grade, Makenzie Tomihiro (12) has watched Randy’s growth from a lighthearted, joking adolescent into an emotionally mature young adult.

“He’s definitely grown in that he really puts 100% into all his friendships,” Makenzie said. “I think that a lot of people would agree with me in that it’s nice knowing that there’s someone willing to go that extra mile for them. He’s grown to be very thoughtful. He’s one of the most forgiving people I’ve known. While he is aware that quality of himself in that he doesn’t let people take advantage of that, he understands that people can make mistakes, and I think that has factors into how he views friendships and relationships. He doesn’t need his friends to be perfect, and even if they’re not as close with him at the time you can know that he will always be there for you.”

In classic proverbial hopefulness, it’s common to search for a silver lining after an accident. For Randy, Michael’s unfortunate accident manifested in an irreplaceable, naturally forged connection with his family, particularly his mom.

“I think anyone that knows me knows that I have a very strange relationship with my mom in the sense that to outsiders, it seems like we argue a bicker a lot,” he said. “But in reality, I think I’ve just understood that my mom’s going to be this figure that always pushes me and always wants the best for me… I think me and my mom are like those best friends that don’t talk about minor issues and talk about the big things. I know I can always count on my mom for anything.”