PLACERVILLE Calif.
When those who knew her talk about Annie Le, they do so in superlatives best student they ever had, most dedicated volunteer, smartest teenager they’ve ever known.
So it was not surprising when her classmates at Union Mine High School in California’s Sierra foothills voted her the female student “Most Likely to be the Next Einstein,” according to the class yearbook from 2003, the year she graduated.
“She was just a wonderful person, a great student, driven, vibrant, energetic, well-respected by her teachers and by her peers, one of the best students who’s ever attended this school,” said principal Tony DeVille.
On Monday, authorities in New Haven, Conn., confirmed that a body found in a Yale University medical laboratory building was that of Le, a 24-year-old pharmacology graduate student. Her body was discovered Sunday, the day she was to get married.
Teachers who recall her as a top student were so distraught they did not want to talk, said DeVille, who was not at the school during Le’s time there but spoke with those who knew her.
He said she was class valedictorian, a member of the National Honor Society and knew early on that she wanted a career in medicine. A yearbook picture from her senior year shows Le wearing a lab coat dissecting a cat in a human physiology class.
