Two college sweethearts who recently moved to New York were killed in a flash flood during a weekend getaway to Puerto Rico, relatives said.
Maya Robinson, a portfolio analyst at BlackRock, and her boyfriend, Mark Keffer, an analyst at software firm ION Group, died Oct. 11 during a guided rainforest tour to celebrate four years of dating, Robinson’s mother told the Boston Globe.
“They were caught in a flash flood almost as soon as they got there, it appears,” Duana Hamilton told the newspaper.
Robinson and Keffer were both 22 and met during freshman orientation at Georgetown University, where they quickly became an inseparable item, according to Keffer’s obituary.
“He became enthralled with her from the moment they met, only a few weeks into their freshman year,” the obit reads. “They did almost everything together from that point on … They were ambitious, always talking about what their futures might look like.”
The couple also performed together in the Capitol Gs, a singing troupe at Georgetown where Keffer was known as “Posh Spice,” while Robinson, a New Hampshire native, played the “Good Cop” of the bunch, a motherly figure who watched over the a cappella group.
“We are heartbroken to announce the loss of our two beloved members,” the troupe posted last week on Facebook. “Their energy and voices will be missed.”
Robinson’s mother told the Globe she “just collapsed” when she learned about the flood that killed the couple in the 29,000-acre El Yunque National Forest.
“I feel that we lost an angel,” Hamilton said. “They were both very, very nice, kind people.”
Robinson had been living and working in Manhattan for just three months, Hamilton said. Keffer, a Texas native who later moved to London, was living in Brooklyn at the time, near his brother and college roommate, according to his obituary.
“Mark loved his first grown-up home, which he decorated by trawling nearby thrift stores with his interior designer mother, Debbie,” the obit continued.
A friend of Robinson’s family, meanwhile, told the Globe she had an innate ability to “relate to a lot of different people” and was occasionally teased about when she planned to take a vacation from her busy life.
“She was on her way to do great things and I feel terrible that her life was stolen from her like this,” Anne Stevenson said. “We want to know why and how this could happen.”
Keffer’s funeral was held Monday in Houston. Memorial services for Robinson will be held Sunday in Detroit and on Nov. 9 at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where she graduated in 2015.
