Darian Wiley was always the first to show up and the last to leave.

And at Arsenal Technical High School, Wiley’s coworkers and the students he mentored showed up for him on Friday, April 5. Dozens of students participated in a day of service dedicated to the Arsenal Tech graduate who was shot and killed near his home in the city’s near north side last May.

Wiley, a project engineer with the local firm Shrewsberry & Associates, was 27 and set to receive a Mentor of the Year award just days before his death.

“For all of us to work together, and to work on the school … I think that would have meant a lot to him,” said Ivana Casas, a student who got to know Wiley through Tech’s ACE Mentor Program. “That’s just the kind of person that he was, looking for improvement and caring about others.”

Wiley also was a robotics mentor and worked with kids at the nonprofit Russell’s Building Camp, which provides youth with hands-on exposure to careers in the trades. It’s all evidence of his charismatic personality, said Keller Mellowitz, a fraternity brother in Phi Kappa Psi at Ball State University.

“He knew everybody,” Mellowitz said. “And, if anything happened, if anything bad happened, he was always the person that was there.”

English teacher Nikia Garland didn’t know Wiley, but some of her students at Tech were mentored by him, which is why she wanted to organize a day where her students could remember him.

The students participated in a school-wide cleanup, planting trees, painting trash cans and placing new pavers on campus. Colleagues who worked with Wiley at Shrewsberry also showed up and helped with more involved landscaping work.

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Wiley’s supervisor Joe Wiesinger said he got to know him as someone who was good at technical work, but even better at building relationships. He worked on projects to help clean out the old IU Health Bloomington Hospital after its services moved to a new regional academic health center on the Indiana University campus and on Lawrence’s new Civic Plaza at Fort Benjamin Harrison on the far northeast side.

“He was good at the personal skills — really, really good at that and they loved him,” Wiseinger said from Tech’s auditorium Friday. “To see the people that are here, that’s the greatest tribute that we can give to Darian.”

The 2015 graduate’s presence was felt throughout the school’s sprawling near eastside campus. Students and Shrewsberry associates on Friday visited the basement of Lone Hall where Wiley’s picture hangs, smiling alongside students he advised through a mock design and construction project last year. 

Then the group crossed campus to visit the school’s Centennial Museum where Garland had assembled a tribute for the Titan alum where his portrait and poetry are now displayed among decades of Tech mementos collected over time. Next door sits the winning robot and trophy his high school VEX Robotics team claimed as tournament champions in 2014.

For Wiley’s mother, Tangela Wiley, it stood as a reminder of her oldest son’s outgoing nature. Picking up football and robotics in high school, he was always quick to try something new. And, she was always quick to remind him to follow it through.

“He was the one that tried everything,” Wiley said, “But through the robotics, that’s when he really found his passion to work on things,” 

Wiley never received the mentorship award last year. Instead, a teary-eyed Anthoney Hampton, who works as a behavior adjustment facilitator at Tech, accepted a plaque Friday in Wiley’s name.

The school’s first Darian J. Wiley Mentor of the Year award recipient, Hampton works with the most vulnerable of teens at Tech. Earlier that week, he said he counseled a student as she sought help for an addiction. He never knew Wiley, but said the young graduate makes him think of his own children who are near his age.

“I’ll cry all day,” Hampton said. “Being recognized is unexpected by people you admire, and then in the name of a great young man? It’s just a great day.”

Jonathan Mendoza, who worked alongside the Shrewsberry team Friday to rake leaves and plant grass seed in the school’s outdoor classroom, said he plans to make it a tradition on campus. He’s already got his sights set on fertilizer and topsoil.

Like Wiley, Mendoza said he wanted to contribute something to the Tech campus, returning the once-neglected garden to a classroom that students can use in the future. 

Like Wiley, Mendoza wanted to help something at Tech grow.

Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.