Former camper, co-worker from Stanford summer program remember CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione as ‘easygoing’

A former co-worker of Luigi Mangione at the Stanford pre-collegiate studies program and a former student remembered Mangione as caring and outgoing when they met him, then a head counselor of the program, in 2019.

Mangione, who was arrested in December as the shooting suspect of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges including first-degree murder, terrorism and criminal possession of a weapon. The case has made Mangione an object of both condemnation and controversial celebration online and renewed debates over American health insurance reform.

A University spokesperson previously confirmed to The Daily that Mangione was employed as a head counselor for Stanford’s Pre-Collegiate Studies Program between May and September of 2019. The Daily also reviewed a Stanford Pre-College Studies spreadsheet that listed Mangione as living in the Kappa Alpha (KA) house that year.

The program offers academic courses to high school students from around the world, both on Stanford’s campus and online. Mangione’s LinkedIn profile states that he “designed lesson plans and taught artificial intelligence to gifted high school students” and “led a 7-member residential staff” as an employee.

A former student of the program who lived in KA with Mangione told The Daily they had a positive relationship. “[Mangione] was just a very good summer camp counselor,” he said. “He was very easygoing. Everyone, as far as I could tell, got along with him. He was funny, a very chill guy.”

The former student, who requested anonymity due to concerns about online harassment, estimated that around 50 people lived in KA that summer, including students and staff. 

Mangione received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania. Now 26 years old, he graduated as valedictorian from the private all-boys school Gilman in Baltimore and belonged to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at UPenn.

The former student said that during a hike for the program, he had a two hour conversation with about computer science and what that looked like as a field.

“He took the time to do that, to really talk to me as I was starting to think about what I wanted to study in college,” the student said. “The way that I felt was, this is a guy who just inherently cares about others.”

Summarizing his relationship with Mangione, the former student said he was “our cool counselor who was in a frat that we would have conversations with.”

A former program staff member who worked in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF) house that summer shared a similar impression of Mangione with The Daily. “He was very friendly, very outgoing. The other staff members liked him. The high school kids liked him.” The former staff member requested anonymity because of concerns about online harassment.

After rereading old staff group chats from 2019, the former staff member observed that Mangione was “always the one organizing staff volleyball games.” He added that Mangione organized a trip to Big Sur among the counselors and was “one of the community builders within the group.”

Mangione’s career prospects and ties to elite institutions such as Stanford have drawn attention from commentators, who have speculated on what might have driven his alleged sudden turn to crime.

After Mangione underwent a spinal surgery in 2023, he appeared to disclose online that he was suffering a painful recovery, according to an archived Reddit account linked to him. In a document that authorities recovered during his arrest, Mangione criticized the United States’ healthcare system and wrote, “frankly, these parasites had it coming.”

For both the former co-worker and student, the announcement that Mangione was a person of interest in the shooting came as a shock. “Of all the people I’ve known in my life, he would not have been in my top 10,000 guesses,” the former staff member said.

“It feels like a fever dream,” the former student said.

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