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Zeek Reyes's Microcassette Archive

Zeek Reyes’s microcassette archive was a collection of audio recordings, photographs, notebooks, journals, health notes, and drawings created or preserved by Zeek Reyes while he raised his infant son, Julian Reyes. Zeek recorded primarily because he was lonely after his separation from Ashley, although he sometimes addressed Julian directly and preserved the collection for him. Years after Zeek’s death, an unidentified person anonymously left the archive at Julian’s apartment.

Components and Storage

The archive included an Olympus Pearlcorder S713 microcassette recorder and a separate box containing a large number of recorded microcassettes. The S713 was a small, battery-powered recorder with a built-in microphone and speaker, voice-activated recording, a mechanical tape counter, and two selectable tape speeds. Its slower speed allowed longer recordings on each microcassette.

The written materials included bound journals, books of different sizes, inexpensive spiral notebooks, health notes, and casual drawings. Zeek sometimes annotated drawings in the margins with remarks such as “because I was bored.” The mixture of formats reflected material accumulated over time rather than a single organized journal project.

The archive also included photographs Zeek had taken and saved of Ashley with Julian. He had kept them as family photographs without knowing that Julian would later need them to understand his mother.

The recorder, tapes, and written materials were stored in a locked safe. The safe opened with Julian’s birthdate, identified by the handwritten words “his bday” taped beneath it. When the archive reached Julian, the safe was enclosed in nested boxes secured by extensive layers of tape. Zeek had written both “for Julian” on the inner package and “his bday” beneath the safe. Julian did not recognize the handwriting when he first encountered it because he had never seen his father’s writing.

Recorded Contents

Most of the microcassettes consisted of Zeek talking or rambling because he was lonely. He sometimes worried aloud that Julian might never understand or want so much recorded material and that buying and using the tapes was wasteful. Zeek continued recording despite those doubts. In one entry, he explained, “cuz I wish I could talk to your mama, wherever she be at right now.”

The tapes included accounts of difficult nights, Zeek’s symptoms, his efforts to obtain care, and his attempts to continue working and caring for Julian. Baby Julian could be heard in the background of some entries. The recordings did not form a complete or orderly medical history, but they preserved Zeek’s descriptions of his health before his death.

The Pearlcorder’s voice-activation function also produced accidental recordings. Some tapes captured Zeek asleep and snoring. Others recorded health episodes that he had not intended to document or preserve.

Written Contents

The journals and notebooks included notes addressed directly to Julian. In one, Zeek told Julian that his mami had loved him and explicitly separated Ashley’s illness from the depth of that love: “and don’t you ever fucking doubt that for a second, lil man. She loved you with everything she had. She was sick, it didn’t mean she didn’t love you as much as I do”

The health notes recorded Julian’s feeding and reflux during infancy. One entry read, “Kept him up after. Better.” Zeek wrote in a notebook while holding Julian upright against his shoulder during the period they stayed with Ruben Alvarez. As an adult, Julian showed Ruben a photograph of the page at their first remembered meeting.

Zeek also wrote about Ashley’s pregnancy. After learning that she was pregnant, Ashley returned to inpatient care because she feared for the baby’s safety. She sobbed, moaned in panic, and begged clinicians to detox her regardless of what it took, convinced that she had killed the baby. Zeek’s notes described Julian as Ashley’s world. They distinguished that love from things she said but did not mean at thirty-eight weeks, when she was experiencing late-pregnancy hormonal changes and painful contractions.

Photographs

Zeek’s written clarification changed how Julian understood Ashley. The photographs Zeek had taken and saved then helped Julian understand what the clarification meant by letting him see Ashley with him before public coverage reduced her life to her death. Zeek had not created or preserved the photographs as a future defense of Ashley; he did not know that Julian would someday need them for that purpose.

Creation and Use by Zeek

Zeek created the archive during the period when he was Julian’s principal caregiver and the only person keeping a roof over their heads. The recordings gave him somewhere to speak when Ashley was absent and his isolation left him without another person in the apartment who could answer him. His comments about waste reflected his limited money and uncertainty about whether Julian would someday value the material.

Zeek did not produce the recordings as a formal explanation of his life or death. Many entries wandered between his health, work, Julian’s care, Ashley, ordinary frustrations, and whatever else occupied him that night. The accidental recordings preserved periods in which he was not deliberately addressing Julian or explaining himself.

Anonymous Drop-Off at Julian’s Apartment

During an extended absence connected to the production and release of ‘’I Am Still Me’‘, an unidentified person left a large unmarked box at Julian and Kayla Rossi’s Los Angeles apartment. The box had not been delivered through a carrier and provided no identifying delivery information. Miss Shirley, their neighbor, found it outside their door. Because she rarely called while Julian and Kayla were filming, her opening reassurance that she knew they were busy immediately made Julian fear that something had happened to her or the apartment.

Miss Shirley told Julian that the box was too large for her to move safely and that she had asked her grandsons to help. At Julian and Kayla’s direction, the grandsons placed it just inside the apartment without opening or cutting through the tape, then locked the door. Julian asked Miss Shirley not to reenter the apartment and declined to have the package forwarded to Baltimore because he feared that it might contain hate mail or something dangerous in response to the attention surrounding the documentary.

Later that night, an online discussion of Resonance Films became increasingly accusatory. Commenters argued that Julian’s calm public manner did not prove that he was safe and accused the production of disguising exploitation through the language of ongoing consent. Julian began searching for signs that someone had posted his home address and developed a panic attack while imagining that the package might expose Miss Shirley or her grandsons to a dangerous substance or device.

While Kayla held his hands and helped him through the panic attack, Julian’s grip abruptly weakened, his face lost color, and his focus began to fail before he could tell her that he felt faint. His pulse remained markedly fast. Kayla initially could not determine whether he was entering a seizure or experiencing syncope, but she saw no established aura, stiffening, or rhythmic movement before he crumpled backward onto the bed. She kept him flat, elevated his legs, monitored his breathing and responsiveness, and watched for seizure activity. Julian regained consciousness quickly and was oriented when she questioned him. Kayla treated the episode as probable autonomic syncope while continuing to monitor him because his epilepsy complicated the initial distinction. His recurrent syncope was not considered fully explained by POTS, and a possible cardiac contributor remained unresolved.

The episode intensified Julian’s refusal to have the box brought to Baltimore. It remained locked inside the Los Angeles apartment until he and Kayla returned home, and he initially considered discarding it without opening it.

After returning home, Julian eventually opened the outer box and found another heavily taped box marked for him. Removing the nested packaging and layers of tape left him exhausted and frustrated before he reached the safe. He entered his own birthdate after finding the words “his bday” beneath it, and the keypad unlocked. The identity of the person who preserved and dropped off the archive was not immediately known.

The journals and notebooks inside supplied Julian’s first known examples of Zeek’s handwriting and allowed him to identify the writing on the inner package and safe as his father’s.

Julian’s Relationship to the Archive

The archive gave Julian extensive records of a father he remembered only vaguely. The health notes and episode recordings confirmed that Zeek had been ill, frightened, and trying to obtain care without resolving whether an arrhythmia or aspiration caused his death. Because Julian also experienced recurrent syncope with a possible cardiac contributor, Zeek’s fainting history raised an unresolved question about inherited cardiac risk.

Julian particularly treasured the accidental tapes of Zeek sleeping and snoring. Those recordings preserved unguarded stretches of Zeek alive at home rather than speaking deliberately to his future son, describing his health, or trying to explain a decision.

Zeek’s written notes also gave Julian an account of Ashley’s love for him that the news coverage of her death had omitted. Zeek told Julian never to doubt that love and distinguished Ashley’s illness, her panic during pregnancy, and things she said in late-pregnancy pain from any absence or reduction of it. His clarification began changing Julian’s understanding, and the photographs made that change emotionally accessible. The archive did not give Julian Ashley’s own voice, but it gave him images of her with him that had not been created to persuade or explain. By contrast, the tapes and notebooks gave Julian Zeek’s voice, handwriting, rambling, pet names, and ordinary unguarded presence, which made Julian’s feelings toward his father more immediate and accessible.

After the documentary’s success, Julian reconnected with the Alvarez family, and Ruben gave him the medical examiner information released after Zeek’s death. That information did not establish a definitive cause or resolve the existing question of arrhythmia or aspiration.

Associated People

Zeek Reyes

Zeek created the archive, made the recordings, and wrote or drew the accompanying material while raising Julian.

Julian Reyes

Julian received the archive anonymously as an adult. His birthdate opened the safe, and the inner package identified him as its intended recipient.

Megan Ashley Alvarez

Ashley’s absence contributed directly to Zeek’s use of the recorder. He described the recordings as a substitute for conversations he wished he could still have with her.

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