Heather Kress made the Simon Fraser Lodge a better place for
seniors.
The third youngest in a close family of six children learned early in life growing up in Prince George the value of being organized and taking care of business and put those skills to work as an administrative
assistant at the lodge.
"She was a good at researching and paperwork and she was a super caregiver who looked after a lot of legal and administrative matters," said Gene Altizer, Kress's oldest brother.
"She just got into the system and bulldogged her way and she was just one of those people who got things done."
Kress, 47, was killed Thursday morning in a two-vehicle highway accident that also claimed the lives of her brother Matt, his wife Leah and their children Jonathan and Emily. She made a last-minute decision to join her brother on that fateful trip to Vancouver, where the family was going to watch a Davis Cup tennis match.
"Heather was an active kid who loved sports and she was very good in school," Gene Altizer said. "She was very patient, very intuitive, and bubbly; she was very social. We are a very close family."
Gene is struggling to come to grips with the unfathomable event of losing so much of his family on the same day and is relying on his faith as a church member of the Jehovah Witnesses, as were Matt and Leah and their family, to help him through this troubling time. "Five members in one day, I just keep shaking my head - how can you lose five people in one day?" said Gene. "It's just too much to grasp right now."
Kress is survived by her husband Brad and 23-year-old son Kieran, her brothers Gene, Ed, and Tim Lance, and her mother Hilda.
