Whenever friends needed him, Mike Ey was reliable and always there for them.
“If you made plans, he would never flake. You could always call him and depend on him to be there for you at any time, for any reason,” said Philippe Johnson. “He really put his friends before anything. He was inspiring and I always try and be more like him in that way. He was an amazing friend.”
Johnson last saw Ey a little bit before 1 a.m. last Saturday morning. Ey, 30, spent Friday night visiting with Johnson and another friend, Pete Cochran, at their Capitol Hill apartment in Seattle before heading back to his Woodinville home, which he shared with his girlfriend Kelley Piering.
Less than a half hour later, Ey was killed in a rear-end, hit-and-run collision off the State Route 520 offramp in Redmond.
Johnson recalls the evening in Seattle: “We had fun, we just sort of talked and watched some stuff on Netflix. (When Ey left) it was pretty late for him, actually — he liked to go to bed early. I’m sure he was in a good mood the entire drive home.”
HOLOLENS EXPERIENCE
Ey, Johnson, Piering and Cochran all met at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York about nine years ago. Ey grew up in Hopewell, N.J., and was a software engineer at Microsoft Corp., where he and Johnson were part of teams working on the groundbreaking HoloLens project, which “brings high-definition holograms to life in your world, where they integrate with your physical places, spaces, and things,” according to the Microsoft website.
HoloLens aims to empower people to achieve more, and that’s exactly what Ey was all about, Johnson said.
“He was absolutely thrilled to be out here with his friends working on something this incredible. He was good at it, too,” said Johnson, a senior software engineer. “I’m really glad he got to experience that. It was a real special privilege to be able to work with a close friend on something like this.”
Ey and Johnson worked together before on school projects and when developing a video game. Ey, who studied game design and development and graduated from RIT in 2010, previously worked at IMVU in Mountain View, Calif., before hooking up with Microsoft in June 2013 after Johnson suggested he interview at the Redmond campus.
Johnson hates to admit it, but he felt Ey was a little more productive than himself. Ey — who was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the HoloLens project — “just really picked things up super quickly and (could) really wrap his head around problems and was very detail oriented,” Johnson said.
Piering echoed Johnson’s comments that Ey was an all-around dependable person: “It doesn’t matter what you ask him to do, he’ll get it done, or he’ll find a way to get it done, or he’ll learn how to get it done. And he’s always happy to help.”
While living in the Bay Area with Ey, Piering said that Johnson contacted Ey from Microsoft and informed him of a mystery project that would be an ideal fit for him. Ey and Piering put their trust in Johnson and moved up to the Seattle area to check out the project, which would soon be revealed as HoloLens.
“He was so excited. He couldn’t tell me anything. We moved up here not knowing what he was working on — at all,” Piering said. “He came home from work the first day, he’s like, ‘It is really cool.’
Once Microsoft made an announcement about HoloLens, Piering said that Ey was thrilled and sent her links all day, with an especially crucial one being when they were on Livestream. Later that day, he asked Piering, “Did you see it?”
‘BY THE BOOK’
The driver of the other car in the accident, Robert Malsch, 21, of Lynnwood, was said to have a blood-alcohol level of approximately three times the .08 legal limit and was driving more than 100 mph prior to the accident, according to court documents.
Ey was allergic to alcohol and was often the group’s designated driver.
“Mike was very by the book, a straight-edge sort of person. He was a careful driver,” Johnson said.
Malsch was charged on Wednesday in King County Superior Court with vehicular homicide, hit-and-run felony and reckless driving. On Monday, court set his bail at $100,000, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney Office. Malsch’s arraignment is scheduled for March 18 at the Seattle courthouse.
