The Huginkiss sisters

[Pat Riot]

8 minutes ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

What happened?

 

We had lots of rain in SoCal. Suzie was in a  park in San Diego and a tree fell on her due to the saturated soil. That was 2003, I believe. 

[Rye Miles #13621]

1 minute ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

We had lots of rain in SoCal. Suzie was in a  park in San Diego and a tree fell on her due to the saturated soil. That was 2003, I believe. 

Oh wow how sad!

[Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217]

2 hours ago, Alpo said:

Do you know how she is doing health-wise?

Recently, she wrote that she was still cancer-free. Her daughter married and had a baby girl.

[Injun Ryder, SASS #36201L]

34 minutes ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

What happened?

 

 

24 minutes ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

We had lots of rain in SoCal. Suzie was in a  park in San Diego and a tree fell on her due to the saturated soil. That was 2003, I believe. 

 

Friends recall author-adventurer Suzee Vlk lived life to the fullest
 

By Karen Kucher
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 8, 2003

Eclectic and funny, Suzee J. Vlk regarded life as one big adventure. Her friends, mourning her death in a bizarre accident, recalled a woman who had a love of language and included jokes in every e-mail.

 

A law-school graduate who took up tutoring to pay the bills and eventually ran her own test-preparation company, Vlk hunted bear in Alaska, caught a ride in an Iditarod dog sled race and learned how to shoot from a horse, cowboy-style.

 

Maybe it's her motto, printed in one of the books she authored, that says it all: "Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready."

 

Vlk, 49, was killed Monday when a wind-whipped eucalyptus tree fell on her in Old Town as she was walking her beloved little dog, Boadicea. Vlk, who owned a home in Ramona and had an apartment in Linda Vista, is survived by her mother, Frances.

 

Among the books Vlk authored was "The SAT for Dummies" and "The GRE for Dummies." Editors said she had an engaging style and an irreverent and lighthearted tone.

 

Vlk traveled extensively, usually off the beaten path, said Alice Mosher of Rancho Peñasquitos, a friend since 1979.

"She would tell you stories and you would honestly think she was making them up, but they were true. She was kind of eccentric, but in a good way," she said.

 

One editor recalled that Vlk was traveling on the Nile River when one of her books was being edited. In 2001, she visited Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary, where she was mugged by a Gypsy and spent a day in a Budapest emergency room.

 

"She lived life every single minute to the split second," recalled Kathy Cox, an acquisitions editor for Wiley Publishing.

 

Vlk acknowledged the important role travel played in her life when she dedicated her most recent book to her travel agents, Georgia and Jim McKee. The book, "SAT Vocabulary for Dummies," will be released in March.

 

Tere Drenth, project editor on three of Vlk's recent books, said she had a funny, warm personality that drew people in.

 

"She was like a renaissance person. She could do it all," Drenth said.

 

Bill Gladstone, Vlk's literary agent, said Vlk loved working with students.

 

"She was very intelligent, but very down to earth. She wasn't pretentious. And she really cared about her kids – the kids that she tutored. In the process of teaching them to take the tests, she was teaching them to think," he said.

"You are sad if anyone dies unexpectedly, but it is really a loss."

 

After the accident, park rangers were unable to locate Vlk's dog. But yesterday, a woman who had found it took it to the Kearny Mesa skilled nursing facility where Vlk's mother is living. An employee of the facility plans to adopt the dog and has promised to bring it to Vlk's mother for periodic visits.

[Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967]

1 hour ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

What happened?

 

 

She was walking her little dog, Bodacia (sp?) one windy morning, when an 80' eucalyptus tree fell...  

[Alpo]

There was an article about Suzee and IN a San Diego sportsman's magazine. She went on a caribou hunt.

 

Before making the contract she asked the guide if the generator would power a blow dryer. She said there was no way she was going up into those woods for 2 weeks without a hair dryer - not the way her hair frizzed.

 

She got her caribou (she told me she named him Rudy), and came back to dago before the two weeks was up. But her blow dryer stayed up in the woods. The other hunters talked her out of it. They were using it to dry their boots.

 

The next year she was in Alaska hunting Kodiak. She said she got a bear, and he fell down a crevasse. They tried for three days to figure a way to get the bear out of the crevasse, but on day three when they went back out there were wolves down in the bottom eating the bear, so she gave up on it.

[Badger Mountain Charlie SASS #43172]

1 hour ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

What happened?

 

She was struck by a falling tree while walking