One hot summer afternoon, I walked into the loft of a stranger. I was meeting my friend Sooyoung and his friends at the loft: Ben Kim and some other guy I didn't know. It turned out to be Steven. As I stood next to Steven, someone pointed out that we were dressed pretty much the same. We were both wearing grey pants, a blue ring collar t-shirt, thick black-rimmed glasses and black shoes. At that point, I knew Steven was a good dresser. During that weekend, I met Julie, who would become a very close friend. This was the power of Steven Pak. He had an energy and ability to bring people together.

Later, I found out that Steven grew up as an only child, a seemingly rare situation and coincidence. Our similarities made Steven a great sounding board for a lot of my ideas and someone who understood the pressures and pleasures of being an only child of Korean parents. I learned a great deal from my friendship with Steven, about life and myself.

One thing about Steven's reach. Just yesterday, I was sitting in some hole in the wall pizza shop in Ann Arbor, MI. There were four people at the table. I mentioned Steven's passing to Greg Pak, with whom Steven and I both crashed during our nomadic period. However, the rest of the people – strangers I'd just met – knew Steven or had heard about his passing.

During our nomadic period in New York, Steven and I were sleeping on Julie Shiroishi's couches. One night, I was awakened by yelling and shouting. "Hey Jim! Get up!" yelled Steven. I opened my eyes and saw Donovan, Julie's roommate, pushing a naked guy who was trying to get into Julie's room. At the same time, Steven was telling him to leave. All I could tell at the moment was that Donovan was pushing around a naked guy and Steven was yelling at him. I thought to myself, this is the strangest dream I've ever had in my life. Then I realized it wasn't a dream, and I was even more confused.

The naked guy said that he had just been in Julie's room. We knew that there wasn't a fourth with us when we were coming home from the bar. Steven also began yelling at him "Where are your clothes? Where are your clothes?!" As the naked guy tried again and again to get into Julie's room, Donovan and Steven grabbed and pushed him out the door. We soon found out that Julie's third roommate had invited the guy over.

-Jim Cho

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