Clutching roses and, at times, each other, a crowd gathered in Beaverton’s Ridgewood View Park to remember and mourn Melissa Jubane.
“She had this incredible way of making people feel welcomed, seen, heard and valued,” Kristin Holeso, a coworker of Jubane’s at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, said through tears. “And boy, did she have a way of bringing people together.”
On Monday, Sept. 9, about 300 of Jubane’s friends, coworkers, former patients and people who were simply touched by her story gathered to honor her memory after the 32-year-old was found dead last week.
Her neighbor, 27-year-old Bryce Schubert, was arrested and charged with her murder after a two-day search when Jubane went missing Sept. 4 from Baseline 158 Apartments in Beaverton. She was reported missing when she didn’t show up for her shift at the hospital.
Schubert is also a nurse who worked at a Providence hospital, but the two never worked together. Other details about the case have not been made available.
“Yesterday would have marked two weeks since she married her best friend, Bryan, in his home town of Oahu. A day where she’s supposed to be celebrating, instead her life was selfishly taken from her,” Holeso said. “It’s impossible not to feel deep anger and fury at the injustice of this all, because I know I do, but the grief we all feel is profound and the weight of this moment is unbearable.”
Jubane had been a nurse for six years after graduating from the University of Portland in 2018. She first met Kathy Keane, president of the Oregon Nurses Association, during Jubane’s senior practicum in the cardiology department.
“She was so smart and just so fun to work with,” Keane said. “If you had a question, she had an answer. If she didn’t have an answer, she knew who to find, who to ask to find out the answer for you. Always willing to help, to jump in headfirst, no matter what was going on.”
Her colleagues remembered how she created community wherever she went. Through night shift potlucks, brunches and parties, Jubane was known for her giving heart, Keane said. She also joined fellow members of the ONA during the Providence nurses' strike in June.
“I just think of patients who spoke so highly of her, who were always glad to have her back the following night,” Keane said. “I think about how coworkers who didn’t know her personally and haven’t worked for years have come up to be here for this today. She’s just a really special person.”
Those in attendance signed a memorial book, which will be sent to Jubane’s family. A GoFundMe to help her loved ones pay for legal and funeral expenses also has been set up, raising more than $77,000 as of Sept. 10.
The ceremony concluded with a song from BAYAN, an alliance of organizations dedicated to protecting women and Filipino migrants from violence and other issues affecting the community.
“The suddenness and unfairness of this loss leaves us all with a deep ache, a void that seems impossible to fill, and it feels as though something precious has been ripped from us too soon, leaving us to search for a way to make sense of it all,” Holeso said. “Yet in all this pain, I believe that Melissa would not want us to remember her with sorrow, but with gratitude for the time that we all shared together."
