Eliza Gomez, left, watches as Benji “Saliva” Bautista tries on a dress formerly worn by Heklina at Heklina’s Closet, a new gender-affirming clothing resource created in memory of the late drag queen at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert (Riverside County) in June 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
A statement is posted on the wall at Heklina’s Closet above a rack of clothing ready to be borrowed at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in June 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Jay Bell holds up a mask worn by drag queen Heklina at Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Clothing once worn by drag queen Heklina is piled up at Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025. The gender-affirming clothing resources is estimated to have over 300 items available to use.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Eliza Gomez wears a pair of Converse sneakers with rainbow shoelaces at Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Three years after the still unresolved death of San Francisco drag legend Heklina, her material legacy continues to inspire the next generation of performers.
Inside a plain mobile structure housing the Gender and Sexual Diversity Pride Center at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, near Palm Springs in Riverside County’s Coachella Valley, is a back room stocked with the tools of drag. Bins of foundation garments, makeup and racks of costumes are available for checkout at the community drag and gender-affirming closet. Among the sparkling gowns and bouffant wigs are a still-growing selection from Heklina’s own collection, donated in the past year by the performer’s close friend and executor Nancy French.
French has become something of a fairy godmother to the group. A longtime Bay Area performer herself, French relocated to Cathedral City in 2019 after buying a house a few doors down from Heklina. After selling Heklina’s house in December, she continues to distribute the remaining pieces of the drag and brings bags of supplies from tights to eyelash glue to the center.
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“The world sucks right now,” French remarked when the Chronicle visited the Coachella Valley in June. “This place is a little oasis of queer joy.”
Nancy French, a close friend of late drag queen Heklina and estate executor, laughs as she delivers some of Heklina’s clothing to Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
As she sorted donations with students Eliza Gomez, Opal De La O, Jay Bell and Benji Bautista French shares stories of Heklina. Although they’re too young to have seen Heklina perform live, the aspiring drag artists have come to view her as a significant queer ancestor.
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“I identify more with the alternative drag scene, which is why I love Heklina so much,” said Bautista, twirling in a navy blue fishtail gown from the closet.
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“My biggest dream with drag is to go on to ‘Dragula,’” they added, referring to the drag reality competition on which Heklina and Peaches Christ had appeared as judges. “That’s actually where I discovered Heklina.”
Born Steven Grygelko and self-named for the Icelandic volcano Hekla, Heklina blazed a trail in Bay Area queer history as the co-founder of the subversive South of Market drag night Trannyshack beginning in the mid-1990s.
Opal De La O, from left, Jay Bell, Nancy French, Eliza Gomez, and Benji “Saliva” Bautista laugh as they carry clothing once worn by late drag queen Heklina to Heklina’s Closet, a gender-affirming clothing resource at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in June 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Her more than 30 years as an entertainer spanned stage — including San Francisco’s annual “The Golden Girls Live! The Christmas Episodes” — podcasts, television and film. She was also one of the founders of the drag club Oasis, which remains a local epicenter for the drag art form.
Her death at 55 in London on April 3, 2023, sent shock waves through the local drag community that reverberated down through the LGBTQ scene in the Palm Springs area, where she had moved at the height of the pandemic. Heklina was in London rehearsing for the parody “Mommie Queerest” at the Soho Theatre. Her longtime friend and co-star, Peaches Christ, discovered her body in the flat they were sharing.
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In January 2025, after nearly two years with few updates on the case, London Metropolitan Police released video footage of three men leaving the flat where Heklina was found dead and asked for the public’s help in identifying them. Later that year, French and Peaches Christ told the Chronicle the police informed them that a “lethal amount of drugs” was found in Heklina’s system.
Heklina hosts “Mother: Britney vs Christina,” a drag show at Oasis in San Francisco in 2020. The drag queen died in London under mysterious circumstances in 2023.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
There is still no official cause of death for Heklina.
Meanwhile, as befitting a queer cultural figure of her magnitude, the most significant pieces of Heklina’s archives were donated to the GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco. Those costumes, photos and other ephemera are now available to researchers and scholars. French also gifted items to friends in the drag community and has put other items for auction online.
In preparation for a future documentary chronicling the queen, Heklina’s video archive of performances has also been digitized.
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Even though friends joke that the publicly gruff Heklina “was secretly a nice person,” it still would have been hard to imagine that the host of the raunchy Trannyshack shows would have a legacy at an institution of higher education.
In May 2025, students involved in COD’s Pride Center renamed the collection of costumes and drag supplies Heklina’s Closet in her honor.
Opal De La O, left, and Eliza Gomez try on items worn by drag queen Heklina at Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
French became aware of the Pride Center through Stephen Wheeler, an art lab technician at the college and husband of her attorney Matt Walding. The couple knew Heklina in San Francisco and live in Cathedral City near French.
Cody McCabe, a faculty liaison for the Pride Center, said the idea for a community closet began in the fall of 2024. “But it really started to pick up steam when the students connected with Stephen and Nancy,” he noted.
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Heklina’s Closet has since received additional donations from former San Francisco queens now living in Palm Springs, including Mutha Chucka and Sue Casa.
Gomez estimates the collection has grown to more than 300 items, which she is still in the process of cataloging. Pieces can be borrowed for performances or used by individual students seeking a safe way to access clothing that align with their gender expression.
Nancy French, left, a close friend of drag queen Heklina and estate executor, helps Benji “Saliva” Bautista wear an accessory at the College of the Desert, where Heklina’s Closet, a new gender-affirming clothing resource created in memory of the late drag queen is located, in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
The students have worn the drag on campus for events like the college’s annual Pride Showcase as well as during public appearances like East Coachella Valley Pride, which takes place in a more conservative part of the region.
“That day there was a Trump rally a couple blocks away,” recalled Bautista, who performs under the name Saliva. “But I knew that being scared and not going would prove these people who hate us, right. Showing up, regardless of the danger, shows, ‘I’m not going to let you silence me.’”
But even back on campus, in November 2023, the student Pride Center’s own Pride flag was ripped off the building and shredded. (It was quickly replaced, McCabe said.) Bell also mentioned religious groups visit the college to “proselytize against us.”
“As fierce and as strong as these students are, they keep their cool and stayed above it,” said McCabe of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and violence that persists even in a region known for its queer-frienldy reputation. “They know they represent the Pride Center.”
For all the tears French has shed since the loss of her friend, she cried in appreciation when she saw the inscription on the center’s wall for Heklina’s Closet:
A sign hangs at the entrance to Heklina’s Closet at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert in 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
“This closet is dedicated to the lifelong legacy of San Francisco Drag Royalty Heklina. By giving COD students access to drag attire and gender affirming clothing, Heklina’s Closet continues the story of pieces owned by Heklina and others in the LGBTQIA+ community, furthering their legacy and impact for generations to come.”