The Berkeley High School (BHS) community was left reeling after alumni Dixie Lewis (’20) and Ross Schultz (’19) were killed last Tuesday in a car accident in Truckee, California. Both Schultz and Lewis were pronounced dead at the scene from the impact of the head-on collision.
Schultz and Lewis were a couple who had been dating since 2018, and were on their way to stay in Tahoe for vacation.
Lewis had just finished her freshman year at Pomona College and Schultz his sophomore at Cal Poly Pomona. Schultz and Lewis were both athletes, Lewis playing softball at BHS and Pomona and Schultz playing on the BHS soccer team when they were NCS champions in 2019. Schultz comes from a long line of BHS graduates, and his extended family loved gathering in the stands to watch him play, the family wrote to the Jacket.
“Our hearts are breaking in a way that is impossible to put into words,” the Schultz family said in a statement to Berkeleyside. “Ross brought happiness, laughter and joy to his family and his friends.”
Schultz and Lewis’s friends also reflected on the impact they had on BHS and Berkeley as a whole.
Lewis is remembered as a bright and driven person who was unfailingly honest, and worked hard at everything she set her mind to.
“Dixie was always unapologetically herself, despite the sometimes toxic culture of high school,” wrote Lewis’ friend and peer in the BHS class of ’20 Kianna Imani in an email. “She lived with a light so bright and loving, it was impossible for her not to stand out. She is fully, in every way possible, a star, and I will forever look to the stars to feel her love again.”
“[Lewis] was like a ray of light, just super giggly and lightening the mood,” said Anna Orebic, former BHS student and Lewis’s friend since preschool. “She had so much kindness to give to other people.”
“Dixie was a force to be reckoned with. She always did everything at 110 percent, including her friendships,” said her longtime friend Mackenzie Andrews.
Schultz is remembered as a devoted friend and boyfriend who had an infectious positivity, and brightened the day of everyone he came into contact with.
“Ross's personality was so unique,” wrote his friend Mia Jeffery in an email. “He was so authentically himself and never changed for anyone or anything. He fought for what and who he loved. He was so silly. He was so happy and driven. He was so kind and there’s not a single person in the world who didn’t like him, and he didn’t dislike anyone either. He had a way of making you feel so welcome and never judged.”
“He was proud of representing Berkeley High, proud of his team and loved playing with his teammates,” his family wrote to the Jacket. The Schultz family has set up a CaringBridge website, and asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Berkeley High Athletic Berkeley High Athletic Fund/Soccer program in Schultz’s memory.