Senior Stacie Lavender touched more lives during her time at UF than she may ever have realized.
Family, students and Hare Krishna members flooded Shands at UF early this week to see Lavender, who was hospitalized after suffering head injuries Saturday while learning to drive a motorcycle.
Lavender, a 21-year-old UF senior, died Tuesday.
She was taken off life support after doctors said there was no chance of recovery, said Hanan Schwefel, the director of Krishna lunch in Gainesville and Lavender’s friend and co-worker.
Lavender was learning to drive her boyfriend’s motorcycle Saturday when she fell and hit her head on a stairwell at a Gainesville apartment complex, according to police. She was wearing a helmet.
“The nurses at the hospital told us that they had never seen so many people come for a single patient at a single time ever,” said Vanessa Guerrero, a childhood friend of Lavender’s. “It was like Woodstock on the fourth floor of Shands Hospital. People were…in circles with guitars and talking about how much she [affected] their lives.”
Lavender, a sociology major and women’s studies minor who grew up in West Palm Beach, would have graduated in May. She planned to become a paramedic.
Her family will be attending the graduation ceremony on April 30 and will receive her diploma.
Lavender and Guerrero had been friends since they were 2 years old.
They were surrogate sisters, Lavender’s sister Emily Keene, 29, said.
Lavender’s mother died when she was 13, and Guerrero’s mother helped take care of her while Keene completed her degree at the University of Central Florida.
“We were like the three amigos, and then my mom left and then Stacie left,” Keene said. “I know they’d want me to be strong…and I’m going to try to do that.”
Guerrero remembers how giving Lavender was. When Guerrero was about to give birth to her son, Lavender finished her finals early to make sure she could be there.
“She was the first one to hold him. My son is not even 2 and he still knows who she is,” Guerrero said. “It was sad, but when we came up to her apartment, he saw her door and started saying, ‘Stacie, Stacie.’ I was like, ‘Honey, she’s not here.’ He had me look through the whole house for her.”
Lavender served Krishna lunch on campus as a volunteer and later an employee for Gainesville Krishna House, offering vegetarian food and a smile to everyone who walked through the line, Schwefel, the Krishna lunch director, said.
Many people knew Lavender as “the blonde from Krishna lunch,” he said.
He remembered Lavender telling him about a time when a group recognized her one night and did a Hare Krishna chant for her.
“We as Hare Krishnas believe in reincarnation. At some point the body stops…and we move to a new body. Her soul is in a better place,” he said. “At the same time, I feel sad because I lost a good friend.”
Sarah Manesh, Lavender’s roommate, said when Lavender wanted to do something, she just went out and did it, even if no one came with her. Manesh plans to try to live her life that way, too.
Saba Rahman, a UF senior who lived with Lavender during their sophomore year in Murphree Hall, said she would miss her friend’s adventurous spirit.
When Rahman called her at 2 a.m. one day last year and asked Lavender to go skydiving with her, she didn’t ask any questions. She just said yes, and she wanted to be the first one jumping out of that plane.
“I’m not just sorry for the friendship that I’ve lost, but I feel a lot of pity for the people that aren’t going to meet her,” Rahman said. “She crammed a lot of living into 21 years. She really, really did.”
