Abby Downey lived in a predominantly white, upper-class area in New Jersey. At 7 years old, she and her mom walked to the communal mailbox area at the end of their neighborhood. As they walked, an older woman pulled up beside them in her car and said, “Hey, this is a private neighborhood. You guys can’t be here; you have to leave.”
Abby’s mom instantly recognized the woman sitting in the driver’s seat: their next-door neighbor, someone her mom was familiar with. Abby remembers her mom’s anger and frustration in that moment; however, at just 7 years old, she couldn’t quite understand why.
“There was construction happening in the neighborhood and most of the construction workers were Hispanic,” Abby says. Later that night, her mom sat her down and explained that the woman had likely assumed they were the wife and children of one of the construction workers, just because they were Mexican.
Big Changes, New Beginnings
After several years of living in New Jersey, her family moved to Spokane, Washington, only a few months into the sixth grade. Leaving everything she knew behind, Abby would have to go to the overflow middle school — a stark contrast to what she had known in New Jersey.
“I was really heavily bullied for being Asian [in Spokane]. I’m not Asian. People would call me ‘Asian’ as if it were my name,” Abby says.
As Abby got older, she noticed a shift in the racist comments kids in her classes would make. In 2016, at the height of the anti-immigration rhetoric during the Trump administration, the remarks became more directly tied to the political climate in the United States.
“People would say ‘build the wall’ to me all the time,” Abby says.
She even recalls receiving personal messages on Instagram and Snapchat, with people saying they hoped Trump would deport her. To Abby, this didn’t feel like politics anymore; it felt personal and wrong.
During this time, she would meet Adam. Their friendship had started in a scene straight out of a coming-of-age movie: seventh grade, Abby fumbling with her books, papers scattering across the hallway. Adam had knelt, handing them back with a teasing grin. Abby leaned on Adam for a friendship that resembled pure childlike innocence.
He is one of the only pure male friendships I’ve ever had, she says.
Abby had all of her classes with Adam and saw him every day, but what they bonded over the most was swimming. Having been on the same team as Adam throughout middle school, swimming was and still is deeply important to her. Now, after years spent competitively swimming, she devotes her summers to coaching a local youth swim team in New Jersey. She strives to be more than just a coach — she’s a mentor, a supporter and someone who genuinely looks out for her swimmers, both in and out of the pool.
I’ve always been somebody who doesn’t like it when people who can’t protect themselves are picked on and I think that’s why I’ve gravitated so hard to making sure that these kids are taken care of, Abby says.
Her desire to help others and stand up for what’s right reflects the support Abby received from Adam during middle school. The racism Abby encountered persisted, but Adam went out of his way to stand up for her, even when she wasn’t around.
“He was on the yearbook committee and these girls were making a celebrity look-alike section and they put a K-pop star for my look-alike. I remember him telling me how they put it in, but he got them to take it out,” Abby says. “He would brush things off like that, but he really did care.”
From One Town to Another
At the end of eighth grade, Abby learned she would be moving back to her old hometown in New Jersey. While she was saddened to leave behind the friends she had made in Washington, returning to a familiar place made the transition easier. This time, however, she was coming back more confident and outspoken.
“It was a culture shock going back to New Jersey because people weren’t as blunt … It was something I had to get used to,” Abby says.
When she started high school, Abby was part of a friend group where she was the only person of color. She noticed the subtle microaggressions directed at her. One moment in the lunchroom stood out when she mentioned taking a beginner Spanish class. A friend responded with, “You’re in Spanish I? I thought you were supposed to be fluent in that.” Having already experienced more overt racism, Abby knew she couldn’t tolerate these remarks. So, she quickly distanced herself from the group.
Interlinked, Intertwined
During the three years since leaving Washington, Abby had stayed in touch with a few friends, including Adam. On February 10, 2020, however, Abby received a text from her mom that shattered everything she knew.
Adam passed away this morning.
Her world stopped right in the middle of art class. Her body reacted before her mind could, as her hands trembled and tears streamed down her face. She only realized she had been crying when the bell for the next class rang. She went to her next class, precalculus, in shock.
I couldn’t conceptualize how this person who was bigger than life wasn’t here anymore. It took me a long time to conceptualize that he was gone, she says.
Abby had to stay in school and finish the rest of her classes for the day since there was no one to come pick her up. After the last bell, she had to choose whether to go to the swim meet after school or not. Adam loved swimming and Abby felt that attending the meet would honor his memory, even though it was difficult. “He would have told me to get in the water, you’re fine,” she says.
As she made her way to the swim meet, Abby thought it would’ve been easier to hold in her emotions. But, in the middle of the swim meet, she looked at her friend and said, “I’m going to start crying.” Her friend kept asking what was wrong, but she felt so overwhelmed that the words got stuck in her throat. Instead, Abby pulled out her phone and typed what had happened in her notes app to show her friend. Although she was experiencing intense emotions during the meet, she still competed in the event with Adam in mind.
Safeguarding Time
At 16, Abby had lost one of her best friends, but learned quickly she had no one to relate to about it.
“When you’re young, not a lot of people have friends who have passed away young,” Abby says.
The carefree nature of her childhood was altered after Adam passed. In the wake of his death, she found herself gripped by an unshakable anxiety about mortality. An awareness that life could change in an instant. The perception she had of life’s predictability became fragile.
What once felt like just another casual photo now held significant weight.
If you go on my Instagram now, I have a billion pictures of all my friends because when you’re in the moment, you don’t really know what you have until one day you want to go back, Abby says.
Every photo, every video became a safeguard against time.
“I’m so grateful I got to know him and to carry with me all the things he taught me. It really makes me grateful for all the things I have,” she says.
Though his absence is profound, his impact remains and has shaped the way she moves through life. She now treasures her relationships more fiercely, capturing moments not just for the sake of nostalgia but as a reminder of what and who truly matters.
As Abby moved forward in life, Adams’s presence remained with her, shaping how she saw each milestone. Moments that once felt routine or ordinary now carried a deeper meaning.
“When I was going away to college, I felt like, ‘agh, I don’t want to move,’ but then I was like, ‘well, he never got to,’” she says. That realization changed her view on inconvenient moments, defining them not as a burden, but as a reminder to embrace every opportunity.
The Start of a New Path
So, what’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your major?
It’s the script every freshman is familiar with: A cycle of introductions played on repeat as nervous students talk person to person. There was one in particular that she seemed to get more than others — “Oh and what ethnicity are you?”
She had gotten used to the comments people made that were usually hiding behind snide racist remarks. Still, in the first few days of college, when everyone was scrambling to categorize one another, the question stood out. While these comments went over 7-year-old Abby’s head, she sees through them now with complete clarity.
Before starting at Penn State, she had already decided how to approach friendships. In a school of over 40,000 students, there was no reason to tolerate anyone who made uncomfortable comments or carried underlying prejudices. Instead, she was determined to surround herself with people who genuinely valued and respected her, rather than wasting time on those who made her feel out of place or unwelcome.
“I didn’t feel like I needed to deal with that in this stage of my life and make those people feel comfortable in their ignorance. So if you’re ignorant at your grown age, that’s on you, not on me,” Abby says.
Throughout her college experience, Abby noticed that many people are comfortable staying silent in the face of injustice. She has seen firsthand that silence is just another form of complacency.
When you don’t care about marginalized communities and about people who are essentially being scapegoated, that makes it easier for them to continue to be persecuted, she says. “Just because you’re not participating actively in this narrative of discrimination and prejudice, doesn’t mean that you’re not contributing to it. If you’re complacent, you are contributing.”
For Abby, sticking to the values she had before coming to college was important to her. As someone who has always been academically driven, finishing college with the end goal of getting into law school has been a driving force. “I’ll be the first woman in my family to graduate from college,” Abby says. Amber, a close cousin of Abby, has a 6-year-old daughter named Neveah. Abby wants to be a role model Neveah can look up to.
“There has definitely been a lot of pressure to make sure that I can achieve that for them without falling short of the very high standards I’ve set for myself,” Abby says.
I set these standards because, I mean, there are so few of us in this space — only 2% of lawyers are Latinas. It’s very important to me to represent and show why I have these high goals.
Fighting for representation isn’t just about breaking into spaces that weren’t built for Abby, it’s about making sure others, like Neveah and the kids from her swim team, grow up knowing they belong in them. Every step forward isn’t just for herself — it’s for those who never got the chance and for those who will come after her.
Related
SPRING 2024 COVER STORY: MIRRORED METAMORPHOSIS
Fall 2024 Cover Story: Feels Like Summer All The Time
FALL 2023 COVER STORY: BREAKING THE CYCLES
