MENLO PARK, Calif., July 23 (UPI) -- Josef Desimone, chef at the California headquarters of Facebook, is being mourned as a "legend and institution" after his death in a motorcycle accident.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on his own Facebook page, called Desimone "a Facebook legend and Institution" who "played an incredibly important role in defining our [corporate] culture," the San Jose Mercury News reported Tuesday.
Details of the accident weren't immediately available.
Desimone joined the company in 2008, Zuckerberg said, "and built our culinary team from a handful of employees in a single cafe into a global team with dozens of world class restaurants" at the company's offices around the world.
The 44-year-old chef attended culinary school in Charleston, S.C., and was executive chef at the Cafe de la Presse at the Trident Hotel in San Francisco before joining Google.
At Facebook, he was an active volunteer for non-profit groups including the music education program Little Kids Rock, said a Facebook representative.
