On March 27, City College student Israel (Izzy) Soto told his story to the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees during public comment at its regular meeting.
“I’ve been homeless since I was 16,” Soto told the board.
For the last 7 months, he’d been living on the streets in his van, but he was ready to turn over a new leaf and help other students like him.
“I’ve been on the streets, I know what that’s like,” Soto said. “I try to stay away from doing that stuff anymore, from taking part in anything and focus on what I can do to progress all of us as a whole. How to benefit everybody.”
Going through the district’s budget, he’d found surplus funds that he hoped could be used to acquire a piece of land and fill it with tiny homes or sheds to give students a safe place to sleep. Without help, he warned that many in the City College community would fall through the cracks.
“There is a lot of need for housing,” Soto said. “There are a lot of students who are in danger who won’t speak out because they have nowhere else to go. There are a lot of people who are being abused and they’ll never mention it.”
Four days later on March 31, Soto was found dead in his van in Lot Three at City College.
In the months since, his story has spread through the City College community and become a symbol for the experience of many students on campus.
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Those who knew Izzy described him as a “truth seeker.”
Covered in tattoos and usually dressed in black, Izzy could be an imposing figure. He was quiet and tended to keep to himself. In the mornings, his classmates would spot him burning incense on his own in the parking lot before class.
“I felt from the beginning that he was from Elsewhere. Elsewhere with a capital ‘‘E,’” said Professor Marianne Peterson, one of Izzy’s teachers.
“I thought he was intimidating, man,” said Alex Garcia, a former classmate of Izzy’s. “I was scared to talk to the guy … You never judge a book by its cover.”
They first met Izzy during Peterson’s Humanities 101 class over the summer of 2024. The course, which met for three hours twice a week, could have been a slog — but that semester was special.
Peterson likes to let her students guide the class. She takes them through human civilization, beginning with prehistory and concluding with the late medieval period, but they determine which topics to focus on and how deep to go.
Izzy took to this format, constantly making connections and pushing the discussion further.
“From the start, Izzy just always had deeper insights and I could see that he was a very deep thinker and a very deep feeler,” Peterson said.
Izzy’s interests lay in the study of consciousness. He wanted to transfer and pursue a degree in neuropsychology and computer science with an emphasis in artificial intelligence. He was fascinated with the prospect of merging human consciousness with machines, Peterson said (though she made sure to emphasize that he never used AI to cheat).
Izzy was well-read and loved literature, but what struck his classmates was his intuitive insight. He could speak on almost any topic.
Early on, the class found themselves discussing the Collective Field Theory and the connection between science and spirituality.
“I still remember when he spoke about the power of vibrational sensory,” Garcia read from a statement he had prepared. “How he experienced the world, not just through logic, but through subtle energies and unseen frequencies … He was one of those rare souls who seemed to be tapped into something beyond the surface of this world.”
As the class went on, Garcia began taking notes when Izzy spoke.
Izzy’s rapport with Peterson was contagious and inspired other students to participate.
“It was awesome because she fed off him and he fed off of her,” Garcia said. “So everybody else fed off of that in the entire class. And every person that spoke had something important to say.”
Students were so engaged that sometimes Peterson had trouble keeping them on track.
“In that class, we tended to get ‘behind’ a lot — in quotes, because we’re never really behind — because they wanted to talk about that stuff,” Peterson said.
Alanna Scheer, another student in that class, bonded with Izzy in their shared experience of religion. They were both alienated by traditional, man-made religion, but appreciated the power of spirituality. Scheer saw him as someone on a “quest.”
“I thought he was on his way to find out information no one knew about,” Shaffer said.
Though he would allude to his past indirectly, Izzy never brought it up directly. His classmates had no idea he was homeless until after his death.
“The thing that hurts is that I didn’t know he was homeless,” Scheer said.
Peterson did not discover that Izzy was unhoused until the spring of 2025 when he enrolled in her Humanities 106 world religions class.
In the weeks before his death, Izzy reached out to say he was struggling with school. He revealed that he was living in his van and was having trouble finding safe places to park, but he seemed optimistic and eager to get back on track.
He asked for extensions on work he was missing and made plans to catch up on his assignments.
Just before he attended the board of trustees meeting, Izzy sent an email to those at City College who had helped him, telling them about his plan and asking for their prayers.
Peterson replied that she would be cheering him on. Since Izzy’s passing, Peterson has wondered if she could have said more.
“You go back and forth between is there something I or any of us could have done? But at the same time, I’m humble, I have an understanding that there are greater things beyond us, that we can’t control everything.”
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The medical examiner is still investigating the cause of Soto’s death.
On May 23, students, teachers and staff from City College gathered at the Seeds Farm to plant a selection of native flowers and herbs in honor of Soto’s memory. Among the attendees were members of a new group, Students for Housing Justice, focused on raising awareness about homelessness and tenants’s rights.
Although City College and SDCCD administration have not publicly addressed his passing, Soto’s story has struck a chord with students and faculty.
At a protest on May 1, the vice president of SHJ, Alanna Rountree, announced the club was dedicated to Soto’s memory. The group hopes to work with Associated Student Government and the Academic Senate to support unhoused students. One of their first priorities is pushing for a safe parking site on campus.
“Now, I would like to just have everybody imagine for a second,” Rountree said. “Imagine you are working 40 hours a week and you’re also going to school full time and you actually don’t know when you’re going to be able to pay your rent or when you’re going to be able to sleep next. For a lot of you that was not hard to imagine.”
Soto was one of the 24% of City students who are or at risk of becoming homeless, according to a survey from 2023.
“Izzy Soto, I didn’t know him, but I know him very well,” said a commercial music major who goes by Chieftain.
Chieftain, a member of SHJ, has lived in his car and on the street. He knows the struggle of finding a safe place to park, of moving every day to stay ahead of the cops.
“I was unhoused, first living in my car. My car broke. I was in a tent,” Chieftain said.
No longer on the streets, Chieftain has become a fierce advocate for a variety of causes and a fixture of community at City. He is a frequent attendee at board of trustees meetings, where he has voiced his opinion on issues from policing to Palestine. He was there on March 27 and spoke just before Soto. The two didn’t get a chance to talk, but Chieftain was moved by Soto’s story.
The Monday after spring break, Chieftain heard the news of Soto’s passing from a teacher. He immediately got to work remixing the recording of Soto’s comment to the board of trustees into a song.
Chieftain hopes his track will keep Soto’s memory alive and the story will be a wake-up call for those in a position to ensure this never happens again.
“I hope, I hope that they do something,” Chieftain said. “I hope they adopt his plan or move on something temporary immediately so there’s no more Izzy Sotos passing away this year.”
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In the months since his death, what has stuck with those who knew Izzy are the conversations.
Peterson recalled a specific discussion early in her summer Humanities 101 course about the work of Masaru Emoto, a researcher who believes that sound is preserved in the molecular structure of water.
Izzy was fascinated by the idea that our words and thoughts could shape the world around us.
“Because water holds memory, we actually have the power to create because vibrations create shapes and patterns in the environment,” Peterson said. “And then the conclusion, right, is that as humans we’re made up of mostly water. So when you say not-so-kind things to people consistently, the body holds that vibration.”
In one of his famous experiments, Emoto placed rice in three glasses of water. Each day, he thanked the first, criticized the second and completely ignored the third.
Over time, the rice in the first glass fermented, while the second turned black. The rice he ignored began to rot.
