She was the kind of young woman people expected to outrun anything life threw at her. A gifted sprinter from Texas, disciplined enough for the U.S. Air Force Academy, she had already defied odds just to get there. So when the cough started, when the breathing felt heavier, it was easy to tell herself it was nothing she couldn’t push through. That is what athletes do. That is what cadets are trained to do.
But inside her body, a rare infection was turning a treatable illness into a fatal storm. While classmates slept nearby, her lungs and bloodstream were overwhelmed by a pneumonia that medicine could have stopped, had it reached her in time. Her parents are left holding memories instead of their daughter’s future, repeating the same warning: do not ignore the cough, the fever, the struggle for breath. Her story is now a plea for others to listen sooner, and live.
