SAUK CITY, Wis. — A family in the Sauk Prairie area is about to embark on a heartbreaking mission after their daughter died on a holiday break trip in South America.
Cassy Doolittle, a neuroscience graduate student at the University of Las Vegas and an experienced climber, died while climbing a mountain in Argentina. According to a GoFundMe fundraiser set up to help her family, her parents learned on Christmas evening she had sent a distress signal while on her trip after experiencing freezing rain and high winds.
Two days later, they learned she had died.
On Friday, her family is flying to South America to recover her body.
“As a family, we’ve gone on a lot of really great family adventures … we go camping, we go skiing,” Cassy’s mom Pam said. “We feel a little bit like we are embarking on a family adventure, because in a way, Cassy is involved in it too.”
The unforgiving terrain and a lack of rescue volunteers meant Doolittle’s body couldn’t be recovered, so her family is raising money to help collect her remains and take them to a funeral home.
After she experienced travel difficulties, the GoFundMe page said, her parents offered to buy her a ticket to fly home, but she was determined to finish the trip she had started.
Now, her parents are keeping their word to make sure she gets home.
“We were just going to go through whatever degree it took to make sure she got home,” Cassy’s dad Daniel said.
Her parents are remembering her as someone who, once she set her mind to something, did it to the best of her ability.
“She was an advocate, an artist, a strong-minded woman, somebody to really admire,” Pam Doolittle said. “(She) was not afraid to take on a challenge.”
As they grieve her loss, the support of the Sauk Prairie community is helping them get through the tragedy.
“It gives us hope that we can keep her legacy going,” Daniel Doolittle said.
If the Doolittles aren’t able to retrieve their daughter’s body, they’ll use the money from the online fundraiser to create a scholarship or other kind of memorial to remember her.
As of Thursday afternoon, the GoFundMe has raised more than $39,000. To learn more or to donate, click or tap here.
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
