Harvard student from Palo Alto dies in fall from horse
By WILL OREMUS | Bay Area News Group, Mercury News, Slate, MediaNews
A Harvard University student who starred as a rower at Palo Alto High School died Wednesday of injuries suffered in a fall from a horse.
Ariel Shaker, who grew up riding horses at the Stanford Red Barn and played polo at Harvard, was pitched from her mount a week ago Thursday while riding casually with friends in Ipswich, Mass., according to Boston-area news reports. The horse apparently fell on her, causing a massive head injury. She died Wednesday evening at Boston Medical Center. She was 21.
“She died doing what she enjoyed most in the world,” said her father, Douglas Shaker.
From her childhood, Ariel Shaker loved animals, signing up for riding lessons at age 8, her father said. Home-schooled from fourth grade through eighth, she wasn’t allowed to go riding until she finished her school work.
“Nearly every day, she would finish her school work as rapidly as possible and beg to be taken out to the barn,” Douglas Shaker said.
Not that school work was ever a problem. She excelled in classes and particularly loved English, her father said.
“She would devour good authors like they were Cracker Jacks,” he said. Whether it was Ernest Hemingway, Isabel Allende or Barbara Kingsolver, “she would find an author she liked and then read every book they wrote.”
At Paly, Shaker became a top-flight rower. Her love of competition showed when, after three years rowing for an undistinguished Redwood City-based club, she insisted on switching to the medal-winning, Oakland-based Oakland Strokes Rowing Club. It meant traveling to the East Bay for a two-hour practice every day after school, even though her schedule was loaded with Advanced Placement classes.
“I had a big argument with her at the beginning of the year,” her father said. “I was saying, ‘No, this is going to hurt your homework. You’re applying to colleges and you don’t want this messing things up.’ She convinced me to let her try it, because she really wanted to be on a winning rowing team. She really didn’t like losing.”
The move paid off. Shaker earned a trip to Amsterdam to compete with the U.S. Junior National Team and was sought as a rowing recruit by schools such as Harvard, Brown and UC-Berkeley.
Though she left the Harvard rowing team after two years, her athletic accomplishments continued. In 2007, The Daily News featured Shaker after she rode a bicycle cross-country to raise money for affordable housing. She got up before dawn and rode an average of 75 miles per day.
This year, she took up polo and made Harvard’s varsity team in just one month, Douglas Shaker said.
Just a day after making the team, she traveled with two teammates to Ipswich for extra practice. They had finished exercising the horses and were headed back to the stable when Ariel Shaker turned to say something to her friend, and the horse took fright.
No one saw exactly what happened next, her father said, but both she and the horse went down.
She never regained consciousness. According to the Salem News, Ipswich police said Shaker was not wearing a helmet. They investigated and concluded the incident was an accident, with no one at fault.
Harvard students will remember Shaker at a memorial service this morning. Local services have not yet been planned.
Ariel Shaker is survived by her mother, Teresa Feiock, her father, Douglas Shaker, and her brother, Isaac Shaker, all of Palo Alto.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/10/08/harvard-student-from-palo-alto-dies-in-fall-from-horse/