Gary Young,

66, Gilroy

Gary Young was a people person. He started conversations with just about everybody he came across — cashiers at the grocery stores, servers at the local breakfast joint.

He had an arsenal of favorite jokes he liked to deploy in these moments. He would introduce himself, shake his new acquaintance’s hand and say, “You better go wash your hands.” “Why?” the other person would reply. “Because I just got diagnosed with A-G-E,” Young would say, spelling out the letters.

“He was talking about how old he was,” Young’s daughter, Stacey Silva, explained, laughing at the memory.

Young’s family believes that his handshaking may have been how he contracted the coronavirus.

“It makes me sad,” Silva said. “But it almost makes me happy at the same time, because my dad was such a loving, friendly, bighearted guy.”

Young died of complications from COVID-19 in an isolation ward at St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy on March 17. He was 66.

Young was in the ICU for 12 days. Because of the infectious nature of the virus, his family was unable to be at his bedside when he died.

The last time Silva saw her dad awake, he signed “I love you” to his family through a set of glass doors.

Young was a retired cabinetmaker who worked at Lowe’s Home Improvement during his final years. He was a diabetic and recovered from throat cancer in 2004.

Young lived with Silva in Gilroy. His wife, Melody Young, died of cancer in May 2019. They were married for 47 years.

He is survived by his two children, Silva and Dwayne Young; and six grandchildren.