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Mino was a man of almost scary intelligence, boundless energy and amazing creativity and humor. He was brilliant and dedicated and hard working, but yet he also had a gift for having just the right touch to apply to everything he did. And although he would probably deny it, it wasn’t truly a gift of course, it never is. It was something that Mino worked at diligently and with purpose, like every single thing he did in his short life.

At NASA I am what you call a “Global Approver,” in our time card system. I check time cards all hours of the day and night, weekends, whenever. So one Saturday night—it was already early Sunday morning, I was up, unable to sleep (it happens as you get older), staring at my computer screen. “Let me check the time cards.” Mino’s wasn’t done, no hours, nothing. I thought: “Well, I’ve got Mino’s work phone number, I’ll call his office and leave a message.”

Mino answered the phone on the first ring—at about 2:15 am. When he answered, he said: “Good morning David, this is Mino.” Well, it turned out that I’d called him once before, he’d bookmarked my number, and kept it. That was Mino, still up long past midnight, working. Of all the interactions I’d had with Mino, this one may be the silliest and the most trivial, and yet it’s the one that persists in my memory.