Sophia Gonzalez met Gustavo ‘Alex’ Zuniga on the playground in sixth grade. 

 

‘He teased me for a very, very long time,’ said Gonzalez, now 25.

 

They lived three houses apart, growing up in Hillsdale, N.J., but it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 when the two began dating. They were home from college and the only ones around from their group of hometown friends.

 

‘When I go back home, there’s lots of memories,’ Gonzalez said of her good friend and longtime boyfriend.

Zuniga, 26, was a former Syracuse University graduate student who died July 19 from head trauma sustained in a motorcycle accident, family and friends said. Zuniga crashed his motorcycle July 18 in New Jersey.

 

Family and friends described Zuniga as a big-hearted person who always went above and beyond.

 

Zuniga graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications this summer with a master’s degree in television, radio and film. He majored in communications at Pace University, where he graduated in 2007.

 

At the time of the accident, Zuniga was participating in the Turner Fellowship program and interning at Turner Broadcasting System.

 

Zuniga was full of surprises, Gonzalez said. In June, Zuniga was to meet Gonzalez in front of an Au Bon Pain café at the Port Authority subway stop in New York City after she returned from a business trip. She was running late and spent the subway ride planning the ‘movie moment’ where they would see each other for the first time again.

 

Instead, he surprised her.

 

‘I get out of the subway, and someone grabs my arm — and it’s him,’ Gonzalez said.

 

Zuniga told her there were two Au Bon Pains, one on the lower level and one above. He would wait at the one at the top of the escalators, then ride down and wait at the other, then ride up and repeat. He must have been riding the escalators between the two for at least an hour, Gonzalez said.

 

‘He didn’t just go halfway, he would go above and beyond that,’ she said. She told this story during his memorial service held July 24.

 

Zuniga would frequently visit Gonzalez at her work, sometimes bringing her a Red Bull and chocolate bar. The day of the accident, Zuniga dropped in to say hello as Gonzalez was leaving around 5:30 p.m.

 

The two walked to their vehicles and later saw each other in traffic, Gonzalez said. He honked his horn, she waved and the two drove in different directions.

 

‘I saw him not even five minutes before the accident,’ she said.

 

Gonzalez said Zuniga was confident and hopeful after he applied and was accepted to SU as a Turner Fellow. He was planning to pursue an MBA in media entertainment at New York University.

 

‘If you just believe in yourself, positive things will happen to you,’ she said she told him.

 

His peers and professors remember him as someone who was friendly, approachable and always willing to help out.

 

When Zuniga was asked to reshoot a group project for his film class, he didn’t walk away like another person might have, said professor Tula Goenka, who taught Zuniga filmmaking last spring.

 

‘He was very determined. He wasn’t willing to give up,’ Goenka said. ‘He persevered. Many people in those situations would just walk away, but he wasn’t like that.’

 

His dedication and focus is now what Goenka will remember Zuniga for, she said.

 

Sara Brodowski, a media management graduate student, had classes with Zuniga during the fall 2009 semester. She said he was a friend who would cheer her up during stressful times. She remembered studying the night before her final in their film business class and calling Zuniga for help because she was feeling unprepared.

 

‘It was already late, but he told me to just come over and that (he) would review with me all night up until the final that next morning. We pulled an all-nighter, and we did well in that class,’ Brodowski said.

 

Brodowski described Zuniga as an honest, hardworking friend — someone who ‘never judged, never made you feel useless.’

 

‘He wasn’t just 100 percent, he was at 150 percent in everything he did,’ Brodowski said.

 

Those in the TRF graduate program had formed a type of family and would gather for movie or video game nights, she said. The group was deeply saddened to hear the news of Zuniga’s death.

 

‘One thing that Gustavo will always be remembered for is his laugh. He had a deep, distinctive, contagious laugh. It was probably one of the best laughs I have ever heard,’ Brodowski said.

 

Zuniga’s older brother, Carlos, said he remembers his brother as someone with whom he never had a fight.

 

‘He was just a very caring person,’ Carlos said. ‘He cared about everyone else more than himself.’

 

Carlos said the two were best friends and inseparable. The extended family still lives in Costa Rica, where Zuniga was born, so the immediate family depended on each other.

 

Carlos said their younger sister, Becky, and mother, Flor, remember Zuniga as a lovable, dependable brother and son. For Becky, Zuniga was the one who taught her the ABCs and numbers and helped her practice parking a car.

 

Rebecca Marshall, a graduate student in Zuniga’s program and close friend, said Zuniga was a friend she could count on no matter what.

 

He would often step up when it came to working with others on class projects, Marshall said. Once, when he and Marshall were working on a research project last fall, he noticed she was falling asleep and, even though it was past 2 a.m., Zuniga offered to finish up the project.

 

‘He would just stay up all night long to get the work done,’ she said.

Zuniga was always looking to make people laugh, and his ideal job was to be a comedy producer, Marshall said.

 

But what she will miss most about Zuniga was the friend she could always count on. When her grandfather died in February, Zuniga was the friend who took care of her. He invited her over at 10 p.m. and spent the night distracting her from her grief.

 

‘He just talked to me, so I didn’t have to be sad,’ she said.

 

Larry Elin, associate professor of television, radio and film, taught Zuniga this past spring for Communications Frontiers. With 11 students in the class, Elin said he was able to get to know Zuniga, who would also drop by Elin’s office to talk about his future career. Elin was impressed with Zuniga’s ability to delve into an article from The Wall Street Journal and could always count on Zuniga for his insight.

 

‘In class, when things started to get quiet or the other students seemed kind of lethargic, I could always look to Gustavo, raise my eyebrows a little, and he’d get things going,’ he said.

 

Elin, who attended the July memorial service, said he was told Zuniga was an organ donor. He said he thought this was fitting of his former student, who he described as a ‘big-hearted guy.’

 

‘They told us that his heart was donated to a man who needed a transplant,’ Elin said. ‘It’s so like him, so fitting. There is comfort in the knowledge that his heart still beats.’

 

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

A previous version of this article appeared on dailyorange.com on July 28.