Community mourns loss of Lothian teen
Edwin Rivera, remembered as fun-loving team leader, died on Christmas Day
Sunashi Lopez carries a bottle of cranberry juice in her purse everywhere she goes.
She doesn’t like the tart drink very much but the juice serves as a token to remember her friend and former boyfriend, Edwin Rivera, a 17-year-old Lothian resident and Southern High School senior, who died on Christmas.
He was supposed to see Lopez after visiting a family member’s house in Charles County but never made it. A gun discharged while a teenage relative was handling it, striking Rivera, according to the Charles County Sheriff ’s Office. He was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In the days after his death, the Lothian community, including his high school soccer teammates and classmates, has rallied around Rivera’s family. A GoFundMe set up for them had surpassed its $10,000 goal and had reached more than $15,000 as of Saturday.
Southern High Principal Angela Hopkins sent a letter to the school community on Dec. 27 acknowledging Rivera’s death in a tragic accident and offering counseling resources for students who were impacted.
A parade of mourners, including Lopez and her mother Marcelle Folk, honored Rivera Saturday with soccer jerseys and homemade signs at the cemetery at St. James Episcopal Parish. Folk said she planned to bring bottles of cranberry juice as a joke, something Rivera would have loved.
‘Such a goofball’
Rivera and Lopez spent most of the last summer together, Lopez said, making deliveries for her mom’s event business. Over long car rides, they would talk about life and their plans after school, said Lopez, a junior at Southern.
After their shift was over, Folk would send Rivera home with bottles of cranberry juice.
“He was such a goofball, we’d spend more time laughing than actually getting anything done,” Lopez said.
Rivera’s friends remembered him for his good looks and charm that drew everyone to him.
He would visit Trinity Largen, a Southern High junior, in her neighborhood “just to say hi,” she said. If they hadn’t talked in a few days, he would text her and ask how she was.
“He always made sure his friends were happy,” she said.
Madison Collins, another Southern senior, recalled seeing Rivera on the first day of sixth grade and telling her friends, “Excuse me ladies, pretty boy coming through.” From that point on, he was the “main character,” always ready to make people laugh, she said.
“Moments like that you never realize
could be so important,” Collins wrote in a message. “He always made classes, lunch, field trips so much fun.”
Five-minute call away
When Folk first hired Rivera at her daughter’s request, she was hesitant. Initially, he wouldn’t map out his deliveries, which forced him to ask for gas money more often. But after a conversation with Folk about how her business relied on keeping costs low, Rivera began meticulously mapping his routes and bringing snacks with him every day to cut down on stops, she said.
He wanted to put some money in his mom’s pocket, or earn enough to give his dad a gift for Father’s Day, Folk said. Outside of work he would always offer to give Lopez rides or volunteer to help with odd jobs.
“He was always just a five-minute call away,” she said. “He was like a son.”
Rivera was a fan of fixing up cars. He would spend hours teaching Lopez how to fix her brake pads or drive without GPS. He had plans to move to South Carolina after high school and work as an apprentice before opening up his own repair shop, she said.
“Me being me, I was already coming up with business ideas and names, asking him which ones he liked more,” Lopez said. “He was so the type to try and learn new things and would always teach me what he knew.”
No free lunch
It was September 2019, a few games into the Southern boys varsity soccer season. Rivera had been ineligible at the start of his junior year and was finally able to play.
Seth Brannon, a first-year head coach at the time, announced the starting lineup before the game against Broadneck High School and Rivera wasn’t starting.
Brannon could tell right away that Rivera, a defensive midfielder and defender, was not pleased. He sulked away from the team and sat alone. Brannon followed.
“I went over and I basically told him, it’s either now or never. You’re going to be a part of the team. If not, you can be off the team,” Brannon said. “I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t think that that was going to be the trigger that possibly Edwin needed.”
From that moment on, Rivera changed, Brannon said.
When the school bought new goals, Rivera was there to help set them up. When players had to practice alone because of the pandemic, Rivera would schedule the training sessions.
“Edwin took it on his own to get all the guys together and that was huge,” Brannon said. “It takes one person to step up in a situation like this and he was the one, and the only one.”
He was set to be the team’s captain, their vocal leader who led them in pre-game chants. His famous line before games was, “No free lunch.” It meant don’t give up and don’t give away anything to the other team, Brannon said.
About a month before his death, Rivera began working out with his teammate, Andrew Huber, also a senior. Rivera would text Huber about getting “swole” for the upcoming season, Huber said, flashing that signature humor.
“It just made me laugh every time,” he said.