💔“Life Is So Strange: In Memory of Pamela Bach Hasselhoff and Jack White”

Life is so strange. Often, the people we never meet in person accompany us through life and influence us more deeply than our own family members, friends, colleagues, or neighbors ever do.

As a young girl, my childhood hero was actor and singer David Hasselhoff. He became the father figure I never had. His music, his voice, and his TV shows like Knight Rider and Baywatch gave me joy like no one else could.

To this day, one specific song remains my David song - “Looking for Freedom.”

Even as a child, I understood what it meant to long for freedom. When I arrived in Switzerland as a war refugee, I felt that desire in every bone and every vein.

I was lucky enough to meet David in person a few times in my life and to tell him how much his work meant to me.

David & Ex-wife Pamela Bach 

This year, however, has been a difficult one for David. In March, his ex-wife Pamela, the mother of his two beautiful daughters, Taylor-Ann and Hayley, tragically took her own life at only 61.

The news was absolutely devastating. As a kid, I used to collect pictures of David and his family - I had their photos hanging on my bedroom door. Hearing about Pamela’s death broke my heart. Life and destiny can be so brutally unfair. They once seemed like the perfect couple living the dream life in California - and yet, behind that picture, pain was hiding.

David & German Producer Jack White

As if that wasn’t already heartbreaking enough, this October brought more shocking news: Jack White, the legendary German music producer who made David a household name in the German-speaking world - and the man who produced my David song, “Looking for Freedom” - also took his own life.

Two people connected to the same story that shaped part of my childhood are gone. They had it all - the looks, the fame, the success, the money - and yet, they chose to leave. I can’t get them out of my mind.

Why am I sharing this?

Because I want to honor them both - Pamela and Jack White - with love and respect. I never met either of them, but their passing deeply saddens me. I hope they’ve found peace wherever they are now.

I also share this to raise awareness about loneliness, isolation, and hopelessness - emotions that are spreading like a quiet pandemic in our shallow, selfish, and disconnected world. 

If even people with wealth and fame lack what we all truly need to survive - hope - then something in our society is deeply broken.

Please, take care of the people around you. Check in on your friends. Be kind. If Pamela and Jack White could lose their fight for light, then truly, anyone could. They had it all - and still, they chose to leave this cold, narrow-minded, unkind world, perhaps hoping to find love and peace elsewhere.