Gabrielle Lucia, our UCLA Bruin

Eighteen years ago, Gaby was a lively, curious, engaging infant, full of life and ready for an incredible future. Jump forward and that future is now, and Gaby prepares to finish college, in three and a half years, with a degree in applied mathematics, a great job ahead of her in New York City, and a great career on the horizon.

Four-year old Gaby was athletic, smart, and always on the go. She was heading for an excellent education, top grades, success in swimming, soccer, basketball, cross country, lacrosse and field hockey, and an appetite for stretching her limits.

By middle school she had established herself as a strong academic and a fearless leader. She jumped from St Joseph to Notre Dame Prep, from rec league soccer to an elite travel team, from recess sports to interscholastic competition in lacrosses, basketball and field hockey.

Her academics wer solid across the board. She liked art as much as science. In high school she was in all the advanced classes and took a number of AP courses, earning high scores and college credit waivers.

By her junior year, her regular travels with Dena and Jane to southern California produced a real desire to chart her college path in that direction. Jane as at Marquette, after spurning offers from Edinburgh, St Andrews, Villanova and Boston College, and Gaby seemed intent on taking a very different path.

In March 2016, Gaby and I flew to Orange County, rented a car, and started a five-day sojourn to visit USD, UCSD, UC Irvine, Loyola Marymount, USC and, finally, UCLA. Although the entire trip was a remarkable feat of logistics and an informative exploration, the UCLA experience will be part of Lorenzi family folklore for the ages, as Gaby and I joined a campus tour that we had been unable to book prior to our trip. That proactive step, a model tour guide, and the Westwood campus itself left an impression that led to an application that fall (one of over 100,000 applicants for about 8,000 spots), her acceptance the following March, and a confirmatory visit to Bruin Day in April 2017 that led to summer orientation in August and another memorable trip to move her into her residence hall the last week of September 2017.

Jump to today, three and a half years after that first day in Reiber Hall, and after fires, Santa Ana winds, earthquakes, and a year of remote learning, she is facing the completion of her degree. From biology and a hospital internship, she took on part-time employment, joined a sorority, and shifted her attention to computer science, mathematics and data analytics.

She was elected president of Bruin Ventures and edited their pithy weekly newsletter. She worked a regular stint as an intern with a vegan firm after she had built a significant following on her Instagram account. She had two fantastic summer internships, one in Baltimore and the second "in" New York City, that she completed remotely from Los Angeles, following the east coast schedule meaning a 5:00 a.m. start in Westwood each day.

She took up surfing and did some more snow skiing. She competed a scenic downhill marathon after several injuries postponed more than one scheduled run. She traveled, including a September 2019 trip around western Europe, trips to national parks and to San Diego, Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. She surprised her high school friends with impromptu, surprise visits to Villanova and to Marquette. She tried her hand -- and feet -- at water skiing this past summer.

She earned good money while she was in college and invested in the stock market and cryptocurrency. We supported her pandemic experience with a car that she used to get to the beach, buy her groceries, taxi her friends, and stay mobile and safe in a locked down Los Angeles. She will graduate early -- saving her dad a significant sum -- with no debt, money in the bank, in the stock market and in crypto. She will have completed a demanding major, earned an incredible job offer nine months before she graduated, and will have completed more than a dozen of anyone's bucket list of things you have to do before you graduate from college, or even in a lifetime.

Jane will receive received a similar tribute later this year, when she begins the next chapter of her life. For now, I'll praise both daughters Both our daughters have done phenomenal things with the opportunities they have been presented. Jane and Gaby could have slacked off, cruised through, avoided challenges, taken no risks, studied too little, partied too much, and still have finished with a decent college degree and -- not the same thing -- a decent college education. But they chose to take the higher, tougher path, and not due to external pressure from home, close supervision or external discipline. They are self-starters, full of initiative tempered with self-discipline and a great capacity to learn. While the paths they have taken a markedly different in many respects, they have both approached their lives with a healthy willingness to do the best they can, over and over again. Persistence, resilience and grit, coupled with hope, joy and optimism, have made them what they are today.