San Francisco’s medical examiner on Monday identified the person found dead Sunday night in Golden Gate Park.
Kelly Koike, 37, of San Francisco, was pronounced dead at the scene after San Francisco police responded to a report of a corpse at Fulton Street and 22nd Avenue.
Koike's body was discovered around 7:24 p.m. near the Outside Lands concert, a three-day event that was concluding Sunday evening.
No information was available on the cause of death, which authorities have described as suspicious.
No arrests have been made.
Koike’s mother, Roya Koike, said in a phone call with The Standard that Koike was her only daughter and youngest child, a creative soul who graduated from Castro Valley High in 2004 and then from culinary school in hopes of becoming a professional chef.
“She had so many aspirations,” Roya Koike recalled.
But acute mental health issues made it difficult for Koike to realize those aspirations, her mother said. According to the elder Koike, her daughter was 16 when doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, catatonia and bipolar disorder.
The decades since proved turbulent for Koike, her mother added.
Koike was evicted from a San Francisco residential hotel in summer 2019 due to what her mother described as aggressive episodes.
The eviction left Koike and her husband, Joseph Brock, on the streets, so Roya Koike said she welcomed the couple into her Castro Valley home—on the condition that Koike take the psychiatric medication she was prescribed at the time.
Koike would skip her medication, her mother said. The lack of consistent treatment culminated in Roya Koike evicting and filing a stay-away order against her own daughter after Koike burned her outdoor furniture on Sept. 2, 2019.
Court filings and social media posts reflect a longstanding pattern of housing instability and substance-use issues for Koike.
An unlawful detainer was filed against Koike in February 2008—the first step in legal eviction proceedings—for failing to pay $550 rent for a room in a Bernal Heights home. A judgment from the following month says that the lease for Koike’s room was canceled. A May 2017 post on what appears to be her husband’s Facebook page says the couple was searching for housing.
Accounts from her mother, social media posts and a drug case in criminal court suggest Koike struggled with substance use. In her conversation with The Stanard, her mother Roya Koike recalled how her daughter’s room had been strewn with alcohol bottles at the time of the 2019 eviction.
Despite all her troubles, Royo Koike said her daughter was a kind soul with “a really big heart.”
Roya Koike said her daughter also had a special attachment to the City by the Bay.
“She loved San Francisco,” the mother said. “She grew up in Castro Valley, but San Francisco was her home.”