For much of her young life, Karen Pohl was there when people needed help.
That didn’t end when the 2008 graduate of Ridgefield High School died Saturday in a Spokane hospital. Pohl was an organ donor.
Pohl, 22, suffered a stroke April 9 at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where she was a senior majoring in biology.
Pohl also was a multi-tasking volunteer, whose community service included Moscow ambulance runs as well as Christmas-break missions to Central America.
“Joining the ambulance company in order to become an EMT showed that she cared about people,” said Dan Carscallen, who is in charge of Moscow’s volunteer ambulance service.
“The fact that she had the foresight to become an organ donor just proves it further,” Carscallen said.
Pohl had recently undertaken two other volunteer roles, and she brought along plenty of help. Pohl was a student coordinator at the Associated Students volunteer center. Meladi Mottern, an administrative assistant in the associated students office, said Pohl organized service trips during school breaks.
“During the Christmas break, we send groups of 12 to 15 students to international places for a 3 weeks,” Mottern said. The assignments can include construction projects and working at schools.
“This year, she went to Costa Rica,” Mottern said.
During spring break, they head for sites around the U.S.; Pohl organized a trip this year to the Gulf Coast, where the Idaho volunteers are still involved in hurricane relief.
Friends said that Pohl was planning to become a doctor.
The Pullman-Moscow Daily News reported that Pohl was swimming in the UI pool when she lost focus and started feeling ill. Pohl was taken to the Moscow hospital in an ambulance staffed by fellow volunteers.
“In a small town, there always is a chance you will take someone you know,” Carscallen noted.
After hospital staff determined that she suffered a stroke, Pohl was transferred to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.
According to a CaringBridge website, Pohl was placed in a medically induced coma at Sacred Heart to relieve the pressure and swelling on her brain after the stroke. On Saturday, tests showed no activity in her brain, and Pohl was taken off life support, Kelli Hadley of the Daily News reported.
Students, faculty, co-workers and friends packed the student body office Sunday to share their memories of Pohl.
“This is not a memorial, we just wanted to bring people together to take care of each other,” Dean of Students Bruce Pitman told The Daily News. “It’s a time to tell stories and give each other hugs.”
“She made friendships, took care of those friendships and took care of her friends,” said Pitman, who had traveled with Pohl on a spring-break trip to Louisiana.
As a Ridgefield High School senior, Pohl organized a food drive that collected more than a ton of food.
Carscallen, who was Pohl’s boss at the ambulance company, said their student volunteers tend to cycle through the program quickly. He said it would have been nice to know Pohl better.
But he knew one important thing about her, Carscallen said: “She was a helper.”
