Schools

PAYING RESPECTS: Memorial Service, Fundraising Plans for Xavier Prep Teen

The Xavier College Preparatory High School community is coming together to support the family of one of their own who died this week.

The Xavier Prep community in Palm Desert is joining together to remember and pay their respects to a student who died this week after a skateboarding accident.

Greg Friscia, 17, of Rancho Mirage, died March 24 and will be laid to rest Wednesday.

The school in mourning has scheduled a memorial service at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Palm Desert.

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The service will begin at 11 a.m. and the entire community is invited to attend, according to school parent and volunteer Susan Estay.

Estay tells Palm Desert Patch that following the service, a reception will be held at the high school, and everyone is also welcomed to that event.  Classes have been canceled for Wednesday at Xavier, she said.

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Greg Friscia Scholarship

In addition to the memorial service, the school is remembering Friscia through a scholarship fund they've set up.

"Greg’s family has requested that in lieu of flowers, people send donations to the scholarship," Estay said.

To raise money for the fund, the school is selling t-shirts that simply say: GREG.  Those shirts— which are purple for the St. Miguel Pro 'house' at Xavier he belonged to— cost $10, and can be purchased through the school's website here.

Estay tells Patch Friscia had already been accepted to Boston College, and was awaiting more college responses from several other schools, including Stanford.

"He was a very bright, bright boy," she said, of the teen who was friends with her daughter.  "We miss him; it’s been hard."

The teen, and senior at Xavier, had been in a medically induced coma after a fall off of his skateboard a week before his death, officials reported. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.


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