Aether wins Rep. Mark Takano’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 39th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Aether, Anthony Hernandez said, “The first time I stepped into the Loma Linda Veterans Affairs Hospital, I didn’t realize that I was walking into the place that would redefine how I viewed compassion, service, and purpose. I was only a high school student then, nervous and unsure, holding a clipboard and a badge that felt far too official for someone my age. The smell of antiseptic filled the air, and the halls were lined with portraits of men and women who had given everything for their country. For the last three summers of my high school career, I kept coming back. I spent more than 300 hours volunteering across different departments of that hospital, from the dementia ward to the Community Living Center. I escorted veterans to appointments, handed out hygiene kits to homeless veterans, and sat beside patients who simply needed someone to talk to.

“Each department taught me something new about the quiet weight these veterans carried. Some of them had long families and still felt alone. Others had no one left but the nurses who checked in on them each morning. It was in those in-between moments, sitting in the stillness between medical rounds, that I began to truly listen. One of those moments came with a man named Cricket. He loved poetry, though his memory often betrayed him. We used to write together, passing a notebook back and forth like two students sharing a secret language. One afternoon, as sunlight filtered through the blinds, he looked at me and said, ‘I wish I had something that could talk back when no one’s around.’ That sentence changed everything for me.

“Later that week, I helped install a wellness app on another veteran’s tablet. It was supposed to help with stress, but within minutes, he grew frustrated and closed it. The app felt cold, detached, almost lifeless. I began to realize that these tools weren’t failing because of poor design—they were failing because they lacked feeling. Veterans needed something human, something that understood them beyond their symptoms.

“That is how Aether began. I wanted to create a companion that could listen, not just respond. I wanted to create a space where veterans could find comfort, conversation, and calm, even when the world felt far away. Every line of code became a reflection of those hospital days, of Cricket’s poetry, and of the quiet resilience I saw in every veteran I met.”