Marco Troper, a 19-year-old student at the University of California, Berkeley, and the son of Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, was discovered unresponsive in his dorm room at the Clark Kerr Campus on February 13, 2024. Troper was in his second semester at the university.
The University of California Police Department, Berkeley, was alerted by the Berkeley Fire Department at around 4:23 p.m. that emergency services were performing life-saving measures on Troper. However, their efforts were unsuccessful, and Troper was pronounced dead shortly after. Initial investigations by the local law enforcement indicate no signs of foul play involved in Troper’s death.
Troper’s grandmother, Esther Wojcicki, a renowned author and educator known for her book “How to Raise Successful People,” expressed her suspicion to a local news outlet that her grandson’s death may have been caused by a drug overdose. She stated, “He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what was in it. One thing we do know, it was a drug.”
Troper’s family is currently awaiting the results of a toxicology report which will confirm the exact cause of death. This process may take up to a month.
In a heartfelt Facebook post, Esther Wojcicki remembered Marco as a loving and kind individual. She shared about his passion for his math studies, his strong group of friends from Stern Hall and the Zeta Psi fraternity, and his thriving academic life. The unexpected loss, she shared, had left the family devastated.
In the wake of this tragedy, Wojcicki has called for increased awareness about the risks of drug use among young people, highlighting the potential dangers of narcotics laced with lethal substances like fentanyl.
The University of California, Berkeley, has acknowledged Troper’s death but has not disclosed specific details about the cause, as an investigation by the Alameda County Coroner’s Office in California is still ongoing.
Susan Wojcicki, Marco’s mother, served as YouTube’s CEO from 2014 to 2023 and played a significant role at Google, where she led the development of key advertising and analytics products including AdWords, AdSense, and Google Analytics. She is also known for providing Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin with their first office space by renting out her garage in 1998.
In addition to his mother and grandmother, Marco is survived by his father, Dennis Troper, and four siblings. This loss has deeply affected a family prominent in the tech and education sectors. Susan’s sisters, Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, and Janet Wojcicki, a professor at UC San Francisco, are also grappling with the loss of their nephew.
