Kirsten Speer, 51, Tucson animal advocate

Kirsten Speer, 51, died on October 24, 2014 in Tucson, Arizona. “She was a lifelong animal advocate, and planned to go to vet school after majoring in bio science in college, but that plan had to be jettisoned,” recalled her mother, longtime animal defender Laurel Speer, after Kirsten had the first of a series of grand mal seizures and suffered the onset of other severe health conditions during her senior year of college in 1985.  Despite her increasingly severe disabilities, Kirsten volunteered for the Tucson Humane Society and several other Tucson-area animal welfare organizations, and was an active letter-writer in animal causes until deteriorating vision obliged her to give up writing.