Blesi was only partway through the semester when, his family said, he became one of more than 150 people killed as a Halloween celebration in Seoul became so tightly packed that many could not breathe. He was 20 years old.
“He was an extrovert, he was full of adventure,” his father, Steve Blesi, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And this was his first big adventure.”
At least two Americans died in Saturday’s catastrophic crowd surge, according to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. The State Department declined to name the two, but Blesi was the first to be publicly identified when his family shared information about his death on social media and with news outlets. Later Sunday, the University of Kentucky announced that Anne Gieske, a junior nursing student who was studying abroad, had died.
The younger of two brothers who were also best friends, Blesi was being remembered as bighearted, happy-go-lucky, quick to stick up for others. His adventurous spirit was apparent even in childhood, his dad said. “You know, you walk into a store, you’d have to put a leash onto him because he’d just run.”
He loved basketball and his pets — a gecko, turtles and hermit crabs. He became an Eagle Scout like his brother, Joey, who is older by about a year, and went to college with hopes of working in international business.
While in South Korea, he kept in touch with his family through WhatsApp, sending photos and videos of his travels. One video sent from Jeju Island opened with, “Hey Mom, hey Dad, hey Joey,” and Steven grinning and waving before showing the waves spread out before him. This weekend, he messaged his dad, saying he had finished midterms and was going to have some fun with friends.
“I just said, ‘Listen, be safe. I love you,’ ” Steve Blesi said. “And that was the last text between us.”
He and his wife had just returned home from grocery shopping Saturday when his brother reached out: Had they seen what happened in Seoul? Was Steven okay?
They tried to contact their son, Steve Blesi said, “constantly calling and calling and calling and calling with no answer.” That, he said, “scared the hell out of us.” A police officer eventually picked up, saying the cellphone had been found and recovered from the Itaewon area, where the deadly crowd surge occurred.
Over several agonizing hours, the Blesis called the U.S. Embassy and contacts in the study abroad program. They posted their son’s photo on Twitter. They talked to his friends and found out that he was among those deciding to stay in the crowd when others left.
They hoped he might be in the hospital. Instead, they got a call confirming the worst.
“I just never thought something like this would happen,” Steve Blesi said. “I can’t understand how they didn’t have crowd control. I don’t even know how the hell it happened.”
He spoke to The Post by phone Sunday on the way back from picking up his older son, who was at college in Alabama. Once home, he said, he and his wife “are going to hug him through his chest, keep him with us, do our best to take care of him.”
They’re making arrangements for Blesi’s remains to return to the United States, where “he’ll be with us from here to the day we die.”
The father described his family as “shattered.” People close to his son were getting in touch to share how great a guy he was, he said, and “you love them for it, but it doesn’t take the pain away, and I just don’t know. I just don’t know.”
He continued, “Living with this the rest of our lives is going to be very difficult.” His days would now begin and end, he said, with the same awful thought: “One of our boys isn’t with us anymore.”
He had been second-guessing the decision to let his son study on the other side of the world, even as he tried to remind himself that accidents can happen anywhere. Even as he knew his son had so badly wanted to go.
“I said, ‘I can’t protect you over there,’ ” Steve Blesi recounted. “And for those words to end up being true …”
Bryan Pietsch and Grace Moon contributed to this report.