Sandy Austin
February 12,1972 – April 7, 2013
Lynn May (Leena) Evdokimoff was born on Feb 12, 1972 in Nelson, B.C. She spent the early years of her life in the Kootenays. In the course of her life she attended Winlaw Elementary, MacLean School in Rossland and KJ in Castlegar. In the 1980’s she moved to Whitecourt, Alberta where she continued her education at the high school there.
She returned to the Kootenays where in 1994 she met Kevin Austin. Together they moved to Port Coquitlam and then on to Surrey. They married on May 19, 1995 and Lynn decided to change her name to Sandy Austin.
Throughout her life in the Kootenays and in the Lower Mainland, Sandy worked at various jobs, but her passion was always writing. She had a varied and extensive vocabulary; she loved paradoxes, and incorporated a twist of fate into many of her stories. For some time she wrote articles for a number of children’s magazines using a pseudonym.
With Sandy’s health deteriorating, she and Kevin made the move to the Okanagan. In 2008, their marriage ended. It was in Kelowna that she met her current husband and the love of her life, Paul Halonen. It was also during these years that she became an avid seamstress, sewing many beautiful things for her family.
Sandy passed away at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver on Sunday, April 7th, 2013 from complications associated with Cystic Fibrosis with Paul by her side.
Sandy was predeceased by her brother Chadwick Ryan Evdokimoff, and by her paternal grandparents, Paul and Tina Evdokimoff.
Sandy will always be lovingly remembered by her maternal grandparents Eli and Alice Popoff, her Auntie Lorraine Popoff, her father Ely Evdokimoff, her mother Bernice (Mike) Henrich, her second father Rick (Gail) Skinner, her siblings Scott (Melissa) Skinner, Corey (Kristy) Skinner, Richard (Revecah) Skinner, her uncle Harold Evdokimoff, her aunts, Luby Malakoff, and Margaret Maljevic, her many nieces and nephews, and of course, by her husband, Paul.
May you always run through fields of daisies.