Just last week, Nick Navarro and his friend Russelle Yap were at the beach in Mukilteo, joined by a third friend.
They made a promise. “We planned to take a picture every year as we grew up,” Navarro said.
But it’s a promise they won’t be able to keep.
On Friday, Navarro got a phone call, telling him that Yap, 17, an incoming senior at Everett’s Cascade High School, had drowned during a rafting trip on the Skykomish River. Yap was pinned under a log by the current. Eight other students on the trip safely escaped.
“It’s not right; he’s too young,” Navarro said. “He didn’t even get to graduate.”
Yap’s father, Rafael Yap, said Saturday that funeral plans have tentatively been set for Saturday, but details will be released later. Russelle Yap’s other surviving family includes his mother, Francisca Yap, brothers Ryan Yapp, 24 , and Ralph Yap, 22, and sister Rachelle Yap, 13, all of Everett.
Johnny Mills, 18, a Cascade High School graduate, was on the float trip with Yap. He said the current was simply too fast for him to try to help his friend.
“He was shirtless with shorts,” he said.
He said he and Yap had been friends since they were in elementary school.
“Me and Russelle became really, really close,” he said. “We could talk about anything.”
Mills and Yap played on the high school’s varsity tennis team together.
He called Yap “a brainiac,” who excelled in English, did well in science classes and could finish his homework in minutes.
Mills said Yap loved rhythm-and-blues music as well as underground hip-hop and rap.
Word of Yap’s death spread quickly. Friends set up a Facebook page in his honor, which filled with posts on Saturday. Friends also were planning their own memorial.
“The eight of us there, we lost a very close friend,” Mills said of those on the rafting trip. “We all wanted to do something very special for the family.”
Mills’ mother, Sharon Mills, said she is planning a car wash to benefit the family starting at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Windermere Real Estate office, 120 SW Everett Mall Way.
Sean Dau, an incoming senior at Cascade, said that he and other friends plan to start selling bracelets as a fundraiser for the family. When people pick up their bracelets, there will also be an opportunity to write notes of support for the family, he said.
“Let people know he was a really great friend and would always be there for you,” he said.
Navarro said Yap loved to dance and would practice graffiti-style writing with pen and paper or on plywood in the back yard.
Yap enjoyed cooking and had talked of wanting to become a baker, sometimes whipping up a batch of brownies. He once even baked a cake, Navarro said.
“He had style,” Navarro said of his friend. “Everything matching, shoes and hats.
“He was a good kid. He had that smile everybody liked.”
On Facebook
The Facebook page in memory of Russelle Yap, the 17-year-old Cascade High School student who died in a rafting accident on Friday is: Russelle Yap…Good Times
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