Leave Something Behind, Even If It's on a Trailhead in Hawaii

On October 1, 2026, I joined a speaker panel for the Ohlone Business Society at Ohlone College. I teach business law at Ohlone, and serve on the Ohlone College Foundation Board, but this was a different kind of conversation.

It was fun. Along with my fellow panelists, we shared our perspectives with students about education, careers, networking, AI, and the choices and mistakes we see students make when they are trying to figure things out.

The panel was great. It was entirely organized and run by current students. There were some great student questions as well. What I liked most, though, was what happened afterward. There were breakout conversations amongst students with each other, and students had a real-time opportunity to practice networking and applying these skills in consideration of their own career goals.

Ultimately, there is more to life than your own success. I am ambitious, and I care about my career and how I can change the world through it. I want to create things that are lasting and a life that I am proud of as well as have a lot of fun along the way. For me, a part of that is being part of society, your own communities, and I think giving freely when you can is a part of that too.

For better or worse, I’ve always had a strong desire to make a difference for the better in the world. I have done a lot of different versions of that over the years. I have spoken on panels, organized community events, and even been a part of voter registration at the local high schools. In my mid-20s, I also founded a nonprofit called Asian American Millennials for American Advancement, and through it, I helped organize career panels for high school students, including events where elected officials and other professionals from a variety of careers came to speak as well as ones where I helped out behind the scenes. I think that the Women in STEM panel featuring all female panelists, moderator, and student organizers at my alma mater high school was my favorite. I have enjoyed participating in marches and doing volunteer work – at food drives, for Second Harvest, and local food security nonprofits including one that gave out bread and other food staples to people experiencing homelessness in Fremont, CA. Since graduating from law school in 2018, I think I’ve volunteered 100+ hours to these food insecurity nonprofits and well over 250+ overall.

Sometimes, I’ve thought about it and asked myself: where did the hours go? No one knows. Until publishing this on the internet several years later, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about all of it. You aren’t getting paid or advancing your career. So now, as I’m reflecting about where I want to take my career, I’m asking why did I do all of it?

Many answers come to mind. First of all, you believe in what you are doing, and you think somebody else will be better off because you showed up. And you also get something back. Life experience. You meet people. You learn how nonprofits and great causes work operationally on the ground. You learn how to put something together with other people who are also busy where nobody is doing it for the money. But there is something even simpler than that. It just feels good.

Sometimes you finish volunteering or organizing an event and you just think, wow, I did something awesome today. I helped somebody. I made something happen. That feeling matters too, and I think it’s an awesome feeling that everyone should have. It does not make the act any less generous, and I think it’s good to speak about it – how it feels incredible to give your time and effort to a cause that you believed in. To talk about what makes community work rewarding in the first place.

My hope is that more people experience that feeling, in whatever way that makes sense for them. In talking about my own experiences, it might also be cool if it gives someone else an idea – a friend I had no idea was ever going to read this self-reflection or somebody I don’t even know – to do something cool that will also help others.

And it does not even have to be volunteering. In 2021, I remember being in Hawaii on a trailhead and knew that one of my best friends from law school would also be visiting the same island in about a couple weeks’ time. I told him about it in advance and told him that I’d leave something for him to find along a trail. I told him the location, and some weeks later, he found what I had bought and left for him. And doing that? It was fun.

Leaving something behind for someone else to find or have. Something that I knew would make him smile, and the experience of looking for it as well as eventually finding it, I know it made him smile too. I think there is something in that.

Sometimes what you leave behind is something small for a friend. Sometimes it is advice for a student. Sometimes it is food, an introduction, a voter drive, a community event, a panel, or just half an hour of your attention.

You do not always know what will happen after that. A student might remember one thing you said months or years later, or they might forget the whole conversation. Someone might take an introduction and do something with it, and you’ll never hear about it again.

Sometimes, and I’ve seen this happen more often than, I think, my selfish side might like – you introduce people and groups you know to each other because you know they will connect, and then they become great friends and continue connecting, without you. But I still feel happy, because I helped give others the opportunity to be happy. Because that’s what’s important.

If I think about the times I’ve received help in my life, I don’t even remember everyone. I guess there was that time a random person gave me a kleenex because I was sneezing in Taipei, or someone who made an introduction for me that led to an amazing friendship. Things that people do selflessly, and usually in ways that probably felt small to them at the time, but mattered to me.

So when I get a chance to be on the other side of that exchange, I think it is worth doing. I am not saying everybody needs to volunteer hundreds of hours or join a nonprofit board. Or to do things that, in all honesty, drain them and they don’t enjoy.

I think that there are many ways – so many ways – to bring joy and meaning and make a difference in the lives of others while still also feeling like that act was rewarding to them in and of itself.

For me, I suppose, the point is to notice those opportunities when they come up. One day, I’ll be able to look back in my career. Feel proud of the accomplishments, what I’ve built, and all the work that I’ll be proud of and what others might call successful. But I also want to be able to look back and know that, along the way, I left some things a little better for the people who came after me. Because most people will never know who donated what money that ended up in whatever scholarship or whatever food bank or whatever advice or connection or opportunity that means something dearly to them.

But I know that when I give freely and without expecting anything ever in return, it should at least make someone smile. Whether they find it years later or even a few weeks later. Whether physically buried under rocks near some trailhead in Hawaii or otherwise!