1,000 MOURNERS PAY LAST RESPECTS TO SLAIN STUDENT AMANDA STAVIK

By Kerry Godes P-I Reporter MONDAY, December 4, 1989 Section: News, Page: 81

Tears began to flow with the first halting notes of "Amazing Grace" and fell freely throughout a twohour tribute yesterday that recalled Amanda Stavik's short life as a person full of compassion and devotion. Stavik disappeared the day after Thanksgiving while jogging near her mother's home near Acme, 10 miles east of Bellingham. The I8-year-old Central Washington University freshman was found dead three days later, her body floating in the South Fork of the Nooksack River. More than 1,000 people packed the Mt. Baker High School auditorium in Deming yesterday to remember her poems, her humor, her friendship and her unfailing optimism. "Mandy was a real survivor and one of our philosophies - Mandy's and mine - was to always take a bad situation, any bad situation, and try to make it a learning lesson and try to grow from it and profit from it," said her mother, Mary Stavik. "This tragedy is a real challenge to me to try to live up to that," she said. "It hasn't been easy. But on the other hand, I have made some friends." . The Whatcom County sheriffs office called Stavik's death a homicide and said she might have drowned. But no one knows exactly what happened that November day.

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Police a1so-.~ a composite sketch of a man seen disappeared, j'he white male, in his 30s, is described as;!1l-. av.i~J mustache. He was driving a light brown station wagon with
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Otherwise, Masten said, officials have no new inform

!'We're still tracing down 7,859 leads. We're going back oV~:SGme of the old leads and trying to \'IJ'eed out those that seem far-fetched." .Stavik's death shattered the calm of this rural community, prompting complete strangers to offer their supportto her family and friends. Already more than $15,000 has been contributed to a reward fund aimed at finding her killer. But no one spoke of their anger yesterday, or of their fear that it could happen again to someone else. "whcfd6 you get angry at1!. a~ed Chris Zender, the brother of Stavik's boyfriend, Rick. "It's better to expend our efforts remembering Mandy than to get angry." Chris' other brother, Tony Zender, attended college with Stavick. He recalled the day she dropped by to show him her new bicycle. "I can still just see her riding along with the sun in her eyes and I can just think about that - how happy she made me," he said. "She was an amazing person and we all loved her. "
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During a program filled with music, both soothing and sorrowful, Stavik's high school basketball coach, several friends and two uncles remembered a sweet. pretty young woman who had many talents and interests. In addition to playing varsity basketball and softball and running track at high school, Stavik played the flute, clarinet and saxophone in the school performance band. She was a cheerleader and an honor student, student body treasurer and a certified Red Cross lifeguard. " She coached Little League, worked as a math tutor, spoke Japanese and was fluent in sign language. Remembering the time Stavik missed 14 consecutive shots at the basketball hoop, teammate Nichole Kyle said she "was always the one to come up and say: 'Don't give up, bud. I know you can do it.' " While at Central Washington University, Stavik studied to be a commercial pilot, but decided to change majors when she realized she preferred spending "most of the time looking out the window rather than (at) the instrument panel," said former high school basketball coach Jim Freeman. Freeman read to the mourners a letter he received from Stavik last month. He said it left him confident the young woman wouldn't stop striving until she had reached her potential in every area. "We place the highest value on the kind oflife she lived. We're here because of who she was. We have

is tragedy that this community . dreamed." ,~d they preferred to celebrate her life,

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Shawna Unger, a friend of Stavik's since seventh grade, prompting several people to sob with her as she reeo "I was driving home from school and it came on the never got to say goodbye," she said. "So Iwent to the understands how much Iloved her.

e crowd's pent-up emotions, Stavik's body was found. . . andy had died and Iwas lost because I room and Italked to her and I know she

"In high school, it's not cool to show your friends how much you love them," Unger said. "It's cool to laugh and joke. But Ihope you guys will have the courage (to reach out before it's too late)." tg