ODA family mourns loss of student

SARASOTA COUNTY — Brandi Meshad was rarely short on smiles.

The former Out-of-Door Academy student loved to laugh and had a zeal for life, friends said.

“Brandi was the type of person that her smile (and her personality) would light up a room,” friend Alexsa Dietrich said. “I remember the first time I met Brandi, and I thought to myself, ‘How pretty and happy she was.’

“She wasn’t the type of person people hear her to be,” she said. “She was so much more. There wasn’t a moment someone wasn’t laughing with her.”

Brandi died March 8 at her grandparents’ home in the 1400 block of Kimlira Lane in Sarasota. She was 18 years old.

A Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office report states the deputy on scene pronounced Meshad dead at 9:20 p.m., March 8, in the theater room of the home.

The sheriff’s office is investigating Meshad’s death as a drug overdose.

“The medical examiner will take as long as they need to deliver the cause of death,” Sheriff’s Office Multimedia Coordinator Sarah Kenniff said. “It’s being investigated as an assumed overdose.”

Official autopsy results likely will come in about 90 days, Public Information Officer Wendy Rose said.

Meshad’s death marks the second loss of a former ODA student in less than five months. Taylor Emons, a ODA graduate and former baseball player, died Dec. 5 in Coral Gables, where he was attending college at the University of Miami. He was struck by an SUV.

Meshad, whom friends said had been accepted to the University of Alabama, started high school at Cardinal Mooney and transferred to ODA. As a freshman, she and friend Carina Corry started a group called Teens4Wishes to benefit area charities. The organization raised $30,000 for the Sarasota Child Protection Center in 2007.

Meshad’s public Facebook page has been turned into a memorial of sorts, where friends have posted quotes, poems, photos, memories and other comments in Meshad’s honor.

“I wish I could see your face again,” one friend wrote. “You will always leave a footprint on my heart … I love you very much.”

Funeral services were held March 12 at Church of the Incarnation.

Meshad is survived by her parents, Gavin and Lisa; sisters, Samara, Jenna and Macy; paternal grandparents, John and Elaine; and her maternal grandmother, Janice Brandy.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].