Wild, spontaneous, compassionate and genuine. Strong yet fitting words to describe the person Kate Roe was.
Roe, a freshman at the University of Idaho, was driving home the night of May 21 when she veered off the road and struck a parked vehicle. She died at the scene from her injuries.
A member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Roe made a significant impact among her sorority sisters despite only being at the university for one year. Before UI, she attended Boise High School back in her hometown. While Roe was majoring in criminology, she was more so undecided, and had considered potentially going into law.
Roe had been visiting with friends earlier the same day she passed away, celebrating her roommate’s birthday. Most of the friend group was together that day.
“Right before she passed away, I ran down the stairs to go say hi, and I jumped up on her,” sorority sister Aly Benson said. “She said ‘Hi Aly-bear! I missed you and I love you.’”
Silly nicknames were commonly gifted by Roe to her close friends.
“She just had a super goofy personality, it was infectious,” sorority sister Caitlyn Ripley said. “She just wasn’t afraid to be herself.”
As a senior member of KKG, Caitlyn Ripley met Roe on her bid day.
“Whenever she was in the room, it just felt brighter,” Caitlyn Ripley said. “She made life feel full.”
Benson misses the small things: her hugs, singing to songs and just lying in bed talking. Benson remembers how her favorite places to go shopping were the dollar store and thrift stores. She misses watching her skip across campus with her friends in tow.
“She’d want us to live more freely, to stop overthinking,” Benson said.
Benson remembers their first meeting with Roe, walking into the kitchen with a bright pink backpack and her staple overalls.
Roe’s roommate Makena Herb noted the same — Roe loved her overalls, but hated her shoes. Oftentimes, it would be up to her friends to recover her forgotten shoes.
“Free-spirited, she just couldn’t care less what people thought about her,” Herb said. “There was never a time where I wasn’t laughing with her.”
In their room at the end of the hall, Herb remembers a time the pair blasted a remix of “Good Things Fall Apart,” playing on repeat while Roe held the speaker like a boombox.
Roe loved music, listening to Shoreline Mafia and Matt Mason as some of her favorites.
Joining the sorority wasn’t the obvious path for Roe initially, she actually had some hesitations about joining Greek life. But in the end, she joined KKG.
“I think (joining the sorority) was the best thing that could have happened to her,” Herb said. “She loved Kappa so much.”
Benson also recalled conversations with Roe about what her new community did for her.
“Going to college helped her grow,” Benson said. “She used to tell us it helped to find ‘her’ people.”
Erin Ripley, sister to Caitlyn Ripley, was Roe’s first roommate. They met early on during recruitment for their sorority.
“She wore what she wanted, she said what she wanted,” Erin Ripley said. “The moment you met her, you fell in love with her.”
Despite their strong friendship, Erin Ripley described Roe as her polar opposite. In a usual one of their car conversations, a mutual friend said they wouldn’t have expected Erin Ripley and Roe to have gotten so close.
“Kate looked at me and said, ‘I needed someone like Erin in my life,’” Erin Ripley said. “The truth is, I needed someone like Kate.”
Erin Ripley misses spending all day together, after having been attached at the hip 24/7 as roommates.
“We stayed up all night every night,” Erin Ripley said. “We always went to bed when the other person went to bed.”
As a genuine and authentic person, Roe encouraged others around her to embrace their individuality as well.
“I think Kate would want people to just be themselves,” Erin Ripley said. “Kate was just herself, she didn’t care what people thought of her.”
Roe’s friends described her as caring and giving, always willing to listen. She didn’t care what other people thought, but cared deeply for the people around her.
“Kate just cared about people more than anyone else,” Benson said.
“She would literally do anything for the people she cared about, that was her passion,” Caitlyn Ripley said.
A fundraiser for a tree and bench in Roe’s memory passed its goal by a large margin and will be used to plant a tree and donate four benches to a Boise park.
“Each bench will have a kindness quote engraved,” Roe’s family stated in an update. “The hope is to remind those using the area of the importance of treating everyone with kindness-like Kate.”
Remaining funds will be used to help other college students with financial aid.
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq