Sara Raymond was a beautiful young woman, both inside and out. She was intelligent, kind, generous, funny, fun, creative and adventurous. Sara was constantly busy, but seemed to enjoy everything she was doing. She is an alumnus of West High School, class of 2003, and of the University of Utah, Class of 2010. She was the daughter of Major and Susan Raymond, little sister of Sean Raymond and the big sister to Scott and Sam Raymond. In high school, Sara played volleyball and softball and was very involved in Winter Guard. She continued to perform with Urban Expressions until she aged out, at which time she became the director of the Riverton High School Winter Guard and remained on Urban Expressions as a choreographer and technician. She also helped coach West High School's Volleyball team and somehow found time to get good grades in college and work at Applebee's.
In May of this year, Sara left for an internship to complete her degree in Parks & Recreation at the University of Utah. She has spent the past 3 months working for Opus International Consultants in Tauranga, New Zealand. While she was there she helped to manage the opening of Huharua Park and also thoroughly immersed herself in the culture. Within a week she had picked up the local accent and way of speaking.
Sara had been offered a full time job with Opus International and was planning on coming home on August 22nd to visit her family while the proper paperwork was taken care of to get her back there on a full time basis. She was going to stay in New Zealand until December, and then take a six month leave of absence to coach her Riverton Winter Guard for one last season.
Tragically, on the morning of August 10th, 2010, Sara was found dead by her flatmate. She had died of an epileptic seizure at some point during the night. While her flatmates tried to revive her, it was too late. Sara, this young, beautiful, talented woman, was gone. Opus was kind enough to fly her mother, Susan, and her Aunt Cheryl out to pick up her body and attend the memorial service held by all of Sara's new friends in New Zealand.
Our family is now not only struggling with losing our only daughter and sister, but of the staggering cost of $11,000 just to bring her body home for a funeral and viewing late next week. As of right now, the viewing is planned for Friday, August 20th and the funeral for Saturday, August 21st. We will be able to provide more information as it becomes available to us, but are taking things step by step.
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