Due to circumstances beyond his control, David was born in Fresno in the fall of 1997. He was raised in Reedley, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, and the border of Fresno and Tulare Counties. Reedley, like most of the Central Valley, runs on agriculture, and his father earned a living as an electrical engineer; designing, selling, and maintaining electrical systems for cold storage warehouses - massive buildings purpose-built to refrigerate produce before it can be shipped to the consumer market.

An outcast from a young age, David was left unaware of why it was so hard for him to form and maintain healthy friendships. So, instead, he found solace in writing. Initially, he focused on journaling, but that eventually evolved into a passion for crafting fictional worlds, worlds in which, as the writer, he knew how to solve the problems the characters faced.

And so, as with all losers and freaks, he discovered theatre. His high school drama instructor also lived in Reedley and had in fact watched David grow up as one of his next door neighbors. David found that not only could he write, he could act on stage. No longer was he only able to write, but he was able to use that writing to create a character he wanted to be in real life. His whole life, he’d wondered if people had been given a manual on how to socialize that he’d not been given, but now he could write that manual on his own.

As he stumbled his way into community college, David took the opportunity to write out the characteristics he wanted to express to the world. And in that process, he learned to empathize with people that his church had taught him to distrust. He met gay men and their husbands for the first time, he learned just how damaging his old worldview had been to those around him. He worked for a summer at Hartland Christian Camp in 2017, hoping to hold onto his faith, but the experience pushed him away even further. After a long period of deconstruction, he realized that he had become an atheist.

With the self-righteousness one would expect, David decided to take classes in creative writing, and took a screenwriting class on a whim. This was the form of writing he’d been looking for. Action, dialogue, so much faster and visual, the format of the screenplay lit a fire under David’s heart so fiercely that his professor told him he should think of attending film school.

Over the Grapevine and into the San Fernando Valley, David moved to Los Angeles in 2018 to attend Columbia College Hollywood. He took to it like a bee to honey, and quickly learned how much he loved working with other creative people. Whether he was in a writers room or on set, the energy and excitement he felt was addictive, and he would dedicate his life to feel that high as many times as possible.

Then, in 2020, the weirdest thing happened. People were getting sick, the school closed down, hopefully for only a few months. The housing department at school shuts down, David scrambles to find a place to live in San Gabriel. The school itself starts to shut down. David decides to continue his education, hoping that graduating sooner would be the right choice. But now, cut off from all of the friends and relationships he’d made through school, his mental health deteriorated, and he ended up in hospital.

Coming out the other side of the Pandemic with mountains of student debt, David moved to Van Nuys in 2021. He has been slowly rebuilding his life, his friendships, his relationships, and his career. He’s found a lot of success so far, and he has hope that his life, and those impacted by his work, will continue to improve in the years to come.