Michigan art student drowns rescuing friend from riptide during Cancun vacation — posted photo by water night he died
A Michigan art student on vacation in Mexico died during a daring rescue attempt to save his friend from a deadly riptide off the coast of Cancun on Easter.
Alejandro Gonzalez, 20, was pulled out to sea by a strong current while swimming with a group of friends at around 7:30 p.m. Sunday, his heartbroken mother said.
'We held out hope, and prayed for a miracle. While the outcome wasn't what we wanted, God did answer our prayers,' Renee Gonzalez wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. 'Alejandro's body has been found, (We) are going to be able to bring our baby home.'
5 Alejandro Gonzalez poses for a photo on the beach while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico on April 20, 2025.
Facebook/Renee Gonzalez
The Saginaw, Mich. native had traveled to the Caribbean getaway with three high school friends before the tragedy occurred.
He had posed for a photo at the water's edge the night he died, his mother shared.
'The picture is from the evening he went into the water, the smile on his face reminds me how happy he was to be with his friends and spending time somewhere new. It's good to know he was so happy,' Renee Gonzalez added.
The photo captured the smiling artist giving a thumbs up to the camera while standing in the tropical water.
Gonzalez was swimming when one of his friends got caught in a riptide and the artist jumped and successfully saved her, but 'was lost in the process,' according to a GoFundMe set up for his family.
His body was recovered by officials on Wednesday after a three-day search.
5 Alejandro Gonzalez with his mother, Renee, after graduating from the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy in June 2022.
Renee Gonzalez/Facebook
5 Alejandro poses with a plate of cupcakes, celebrating an anniversary at his work.
GoFundMe
Gonzalez graduated from the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy in 2022 and had been working as a barista at a local cafe.
He was studying at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, MLive.com reported.
'Alejandro is a talented artist as well as a wonderful friend. He lights up a room and is always up to a new project,' Heather Shephard, the fundraiser's creator, said.
'He is caring and fiercely loyal to his friends and family and isn't afraid to try new things. He is smart, has consistently high grades and high performance in everything he does.'
5 The cat-themed utility box mural painted by Gonzalez in the City of Sagniaw.
The Great Mural Project/Facebook
5 Alejandro Gonzalez's body was recovered by officials Wednesday.
GoFundMe
After graduation, Gonzalez lent his artistic skills to his community's 'Great Mural Project' in 2023, decorating a cat-themed utility box mural in the City of Sagniaw.
A makeshift memorial was set up underneath the mural to honor the artist along with a donation drive for the local animal shelter in his name.
The crowdsourcing project, initially set up to help in the search, is now being used for donations that would fund transportation costs to bring Gonzalez home to his family.
'While it looks like Matt and I won't be going to Mexico, we are going to need help with the expense to bring him home, and all of the expenses that come with a situation like this,' Renee Gonzalez said.
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‘I Had the Stroke, and It Was All Over': Matthew Sweet's Road to Recovery
When one of his eyes doesn't feel as if it's wobbling up and down, or he doesn't feel so depleted that he has to nap, Matthew Sweet still has moments of hope. Until last fall, one of the downstairs rooms in his Omaha, Nebraska, home was his music room, filled with guitars, a recording console, and assorted gear. But since he can no longer climb stairs for the foreseeable future, he now spends a good deal of his time in that room on a newly installed king-sized bed. What remains of his musical setup is still visible, reminders of a life and career on pause. 'I guess I have a feeling that I will make music with all of it,' Sweet says, in his first interview eight months after he was rushed to a hospital. 'In that way, it's positive. It's a vision of the time when I'll be able to use everything. I don't feel like it's that far away. I don't feel like it will be an impossible thing for me to write songs. Then again, I don't really feel a burning desire to figure that out, because there's just so much stuff making it difficult right now.' More from Rolling Stone Matthew Sweet Shares Update After Stroke: 'I May Never Play Guitar Again' But Will 'Try to Make Music' Matthew Sweet Suffers 'Debilitating' Stroke, GoFundMe Launched to Help With Recovery 10 New Albums to Stream Now: Courtney Barnett, Stephen Malkmus, Lil Baby and More Editors' Picks For Sweet, 2024 was shaping up to be a reset. After several years off the road after the pandemic, the man who almost single-handedly kept power-pop alive had put together a new band and played shows in the spring. He was in the early stages of prepping his first album since 2021. In the fall, he started another round of gigs, this time opening for Hanson, whom he's known and worked with for more than 20 years, and doing his own separate shows. 'I really felt very positive about it,' he says. 'I was doing two-hour-long acoustic shows playing songs from all during my career.' Then, last Oct. 12, Sweet and his crew — his small acoustic band, his road manager — arrived at their hotel in Toronto. His tour with Hanson was into its second week, and Sweet had just driven up from the previous stop in Baltimore. As they were checking in, the singer, who had turned 60 a week before, felt a sensation he'd never experienced before. 'The first thing I felt was really cool, like cold sweat,' he says. 'And I remember saying to one of my band members, 'Feel my arm. It's freezing cold.' Something wasn't right.' Slumping into a chair behind the front desk, Sweet began hearing what he calls 'this kind of tinnitus, more like white noise, and that became really, really, really loud, in both my ears. And that's the last thing I remember until I was in an ambulance and I heard a guy say, 'Sir, you've had a stroke.'' In the months since that diagnosis, Sweet has had to cope with more than canceled performances. First in Canada, then in his home state, and now at his house, he's had to relearn how to walk, talk, and play any sort of instrument. He's learned that a stroke can impact other parts of the body and that recovery can be slow and painstaking. Since he didn't have insurance at the time of his stroke, he's also become a representation of artists who can't always afford it and count on touring to pay their bills. 'It was really a drag, because the touring went so amazingly well in the first part of the year,' Sweet says now. 'And then, bang, I had the stroke, and it was just all over.' From his studio-bedroom, Sweet recalls the beginnings of his career with one of the chuckles that unexpectedly punctuates a conversation with him. It was the mid-Eighties, and the Nebraska-born Sweet, who'd moved to Athens, Georgia, for college and had become swept up in the burgeoning indie rock of the time, was on tour with the Golden Palominos. Featuring an ever-shifting lineup of New York-area musicians like keyboardist Bernie Worrell, singer Syd Straw, guitarist Arto Lindsay, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Anton Fier, the Palominos were Sweet's induction into the life of a traveling musician. 'I was just a kid, and it was the first time I was ever really on a bus tour, so it was like Touring 101,' Sweet says. 'I would like to go see Bernie in his room, and he'd be there with a bunch of girls in the bed with him. Just classic. Chrissie Hynde came to see us in Toronto. We stayed up with her all night in a hotel room, and I was like a fly on the wall, maybe providing the weed. Such cool memories.' With his winsome voice and penchant for charged guitar melodies rooted in his love of the Beatles, Sweet, along with bands like the Smithereens, kept guitar pop alive after hair metal had overtaken rock & roll. The battle was somewhat uphill, but Sweet's third album, 1991's Girlfriend, established him as an artist in his own pop right. With the advent of grunge the following year, Sweet's subsequent albums didn't have the same commercial impact, but he remained a master of the form, recorded three duet albums with the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs, and helped Hanson make the transition to indie pop by collaborating on their album Underneath. His voice was heard in a 2014 episode of The Simpsons (Homer and other dads form a band, and Sweet provided a Journey parody song for them to play), and he was also glimpsed in Austin Powers in Goldmember. 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At the hospital in Toronto, aides had Sweet sit up in bed to demonstrate how his body had been impacted by his stroke: His left side couldn't handle the weight and would fold under him. In time, doctors lowered his blood pressure and some progress was made with his speech, as Carter learned during calls with him. 'He had to make great effort to bring thoughts together,' Carter says. 'He could make a great deal of sense, but not for long. But he improved day by day.' Sweet also learned that his stroke had taken place in an unusual spot, the pons region in the back of the brainstem. The cause, he was told, was likely a spike in blood pressure. Adding to the mystery, Sweet had high blood pressure in his youth but had lowered it in recent years. By way of an ambulance transport plane with two nurses, Sweet was eventually flown back to Omaha to begin rehab at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital. 'I was the last one to realize how bad it is to have a stroke like that,' he says. 'I sort of felt like just everything was going to come back really soon. And then as I got back to Omaha and went to Madonna, they had group classes, where the idea is to explain to you what to expect from it. I found that really depressing. I did not want to go to this class full of people who all had strokes and have to learn how bad it could be, but it was part of my coming to terms with it.' At that facility, Sweet began physical therapy, walking exercises, and using a robotic device to help him regain more control of his impacted left arm. But his obstacles were just beginning. At that point, he didn't have health insurance, and the bills, starting with that pricy transportation from Toronto, began piling up. 'A good six weeks without insurance, so it was crazy,' he says. 'It was so, so expensive, $5,600 a day or something. I didn't know it could be that much. I would sit there and think, 'What could I have bought with today's money?'' 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Until the upgrades were finished, the Sweets checked into a local hotel ('I was really ready to leave after being in a hospital bed all day,' he says), but that resulted in another setback: When Lisa attempted to help bathe her husband, they both slipped on the shower floor, and Lisa broke a leg and had to be hospitalized herself. 'So,' Sweet says, 'not good luck for us to have that happen.' Sweet's life hasn't gotten any easier since then. As likely aftereffectsof his stroke, he's been diagnosed with ataxia, a neurological condition that often leaves him off balance, and nystagmus, which make one's eyes unexpectedly move side to side or up and down. Sweet suspects the latter diagnosis may have resulted from a smaller stroke he could have experienced a few months ago. He'd also been diagnosed long before his stroke with essential tremor, the neurological condition that causes people's hands or heads to shake. (Katharine Hepburn famously suffered from it.) 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Under the Trump presidency, the future of Social Security itself is uncertain. In the worst-case scenario, Sweet says he may have to sell his house and move to a less expensive place. The future remains a blank page, physically and professionally. 'It's sobering to think I might just have to always have a person that can handle moving me one place to another,' says Sweet. 'My thoughts originally were, 'Well, how likely is it that I'll walk if I have the ataxia?' And no one will say. It's more like they don't know. This might be as good as it gets, or I might make progress.' Carter shares that sense of frustration. 'He's getting treatment from lots of good doctors, but the most frustrating thing for Matthew is that he still has no prognosis,' he says. 'They encourage him to put his nose to the grindstone and do all the PT and just hope for the best. It's somewhat discouraging that he hasn't made more progress, but I don't think that's unusual. It's a very slow process.' 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High school grad goes viral for working at his Burger King job … still wearing his graduation outfit
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You are already a leader and a role model at your precious, young age, and this world is made so much better by your presence," one person wrote. Added another, "Your story truly inspired me & touched my heart. It takes determination & humility to work after graduation. I pray that God continue to BLESS you beyond measure. As a PHD educated Black woman, I am truly moved by your GRIT. The future is yours! Go get it." This article was originally published on
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'90s Alt-Rocker Felled by Medical Emergency Still Needs Your Help Amid Recovery
'90s Alt-Rocker Felled by Medical Emergency Still Needs Your Help Amid Recovery originally appeared on Parade. , the singer-guitarist known for such 1990s alternative rock hits as 'Girlfriend' and 'Sick of Myself,' suffered a debilitating stroke in October 2024 while on tour with Hanson in Canada. In wake of that stroke, Sweet's management team created a GoFundMe account for the musician to help pay for the tremendous costs for his medical care, rehab and to renovate his home so it is physically accessible to the musician, who is now wheelchair bound. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 To make matters worse, Sweet's wife, who was trained to take over as his primary caretaker once he moved back into their Omaha, Neb. home, suffered a fall and severely broke her leg, requiring her to have immediate surgery and round-the-clock nursing care along with Matthew. Sweet's manager Russell Carter, took to Facebook on Friday, June 6 to share the news and ask for more support from his fans, although more than $600,000 has been raised to date. 'To begin, Matthew wants all of you to know that he would not be where he is today without your profoundly generous support. A day does not pass without him acknowledging how lucky he is to have caring family, friends, music business associates and fans,' he wrote. Carter added some details about Sweet's current physical condition. 'Matthew is wheelchair bound due to a lack of coordination in his legs (caused by stroke induced ataxia) and he does not have sufficient coordination in his hands to even try to play instruments. He cannot at this time use a walker. He also has coordination issues with his eyes which impairs his sight. While his speaking voice is only slightly impaired, he cannot sing. Doctors still cannot give Matthew a prognosis for the future which means he must soldier on daily with determination and engage in therapy hoping for the best but without knowing what the eventual outcome will be. This is a very hard predicament to endure,' he explained. Carter added that most of the money raised through the initial GoFundMe campaign has been spent and Sweet, 60, still has some remaining hospital bills that need to be paid, so he's asking for fans to donate again, if they can. 'If you can donate again to his fund, he can continue to work hard on his rehab at home and at out patient facilities and he can continue to pay his bills until one day he can hopefully return to being a self sustaining working musician,' he added. 'In the meantime , donations will go strictly to covering his basic recurring monthly expenses. Any continued support is very much appreciated.''90s Alt-Rocker Felled by Medical Emergency Still Needs Your Help Amid Recovery first appeared on Parade on Jun 6, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 6, 2025, where it first appeared.
