Kaylana Ryan working at Bri's Sweet Treats. Courtesy: Timothy LasellTimothy Lasell
As customers line up in at Worcester Public Market to buy candy at Bri’s Sweet Treats, they are greeted by a tall, smiling young woman who asks them all the same question: “would you like a free sample?”
That’s how Kaylana Ryan, a 19-year-old from Leicester, spent her time as an employee at Bri’s Sweet Treats, according to Briana Azier, the owner of the business.
Beginning in 2024, Ryan would sell candies, desserts and other sweet selections from the store, doing so with bright eyes and a big smile, Azier said.
On Feb. 4, when she was taking a nap, Ryan’s heart stopped due to atrial fibrillation, resulting in her death, according to her father, Tim Lasell.
The reason the atrial fibrillation occurred was due to Ryan’s longstanding condition of Marafan’s Syndrome — a genetic disease she had her whole life.
In honor of Ryan, Azier has launched an annual scholarship named after her — The Kaylana Ryan Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is for Central Mass. high schoolers and is worth $1,250, according to Azier.
The application for the scholarship can be found here.
The purpose of the scholarship is to honor Ryan not just for her work at Bri’s Sweet Treats but for the passion and love she put into everything she did in life, Azier told MassLive.
“My goal is to make sure that her memory lives on. Her sweet memory,” Azier said. “But not only does it live on in every sweet treat, but it lives on through the students she’s able to touch.”
As a student of Leicester High School and Nichols College, Ryan had a passion for reading, video games, Dungeons & Dragons, standing up for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights and was the vice president of her colleges’s supernatural club.
Those eligible for the scholarship need to demonstrate that they too have a creative passion, show resilience in overcoming challenges and have a strong work ethic. Applicants must also submit a 300-500 word essay that answers how they express their creativity, submit a creative submission — such as a short story or a piece of artwork — and proof of high school enrollment along with their expected graduation year.
The scholarship was first only open to Leicester High School students, but Azier recently expanded the scholarship to all of Central Massachusetts high school students. So far, there have not been any applicants.
When Ryan’s mother, Jessica Ryan, and Lasell heard from Azier about the scholarship, they felt both a sense of surprise and honor. Both parents along with Azier will be involved in choosing the best candidate that will earn the scholarship.
“I’m surprised Kaylana had made such an impression that Bri wanted to do this for her,” Ryan said. “To allow her legacy to live on, it was such an honor.”
When Ryan was seven years old, she and her father were debating what job she could have that did not involve her least favorite subject — math. After much thinking, Ryan told her father: “I want to be a candy taster.”
“I’ll taste the candy and I’ll let people know if it’s good,” Lasell said, repeating what his daughter told him.
While she may not have ended up a candy taster, Ryan did very much enjoy her time working at Bri’s Sweet Treats, Lasell said. He said one of the candies she loved the most was the chocolate-covered gummy worms, and she would come home with plenty of them.
“If there were more hours available, she would have worked more,” Lasell said.
Besides candy, Ryan had many other passions in life that brought her joy, despite having a condition that left her using a cane, according to her parents. One of those passions was her paranormal club at Nichols College, where she became Vice President. At first, Lasell said his daughter was a skeptic, questioning the idea of ghosts being real. In time, however, she became one of the most passionate members of the club.
Another passion of Ryan’s was Hello Kitty, a cartoon white cat with a bow on her head, according to Ryan’s mother.
“She never just liked something,” she said of her daughter. “It was a deep passionate adoring of things. If you were lucky enough to be her friend, you were her whole world.”
Ryan’s death was incredibly devastating for her parents. For Lasell, it was more than just losing his daughter — he lost his best friend.
“I raised her with love and she was happy in any picture you see,” he said. “She’s got the biggest smile. They tell you, when you lose parents, you’re an orphan. When you lose your wife, you’re a widower. When you lose a child, there’s no words for it.”
Following his daughter’s death, Lasell has been writing poems about Ryan as a form of therapy.
“When she passed away, I sat next to her in the hospital and I said, ‘I am going to write about you.‘” He said. “I literally have written probably a poem or two every day since.”
Ryan’s mother, Jessica Ryan, said that the one thing her daughter would want the most is to know that her father, mother and siblings are happy, healthy and living a good life.
“She just lived life so fully,” she said. “And she would want the same thing for me.”
As for Aizer, Ryan’s boss, she thinks that the bright-eyed smiling girl who connected with her customers would be proud that her legacy will live on with this scholarship.
“I think she’s just smiling down right now knowing that even though she can’t be here, that here memory is going to live on in such a sweet way,” Aizer said. “A legacy that Kaylana will be able to leave.”
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