FARGO (KFGO) – 9-year-old Kate Dye said she and her friends had been thinking of having a bake sale for months. But when her mom Steph suddenly fell ill a few weeks ago, Kate decided it was time to get it scheduled, with the proceeds helping to pay for her mom’s medical expenses. Friends of the Dye family quickly put together a Facebook event to help Kate’s idea come to fruition. They scheduled it to take place Thursday, July 27.
But on Sunday, 39-year-old Stephanie Dye succumbed to the illness that had mystified a team of doctors for two weeks. Stunned and heartbroken at the unexpected loss, family and friends again jumped into action when Kate asked if they could still have the bake sale to honor her mom. The bake sale went ahead as planned.
Kate said her mom “meant the world” to her.
“She was a strong and independent woman and she was really brave,” she said.
A GoFundMe campaign which was set up for the family says Stephanie Dye went to the emergency room on Sunday, July 9th with weakness and pain and within a matter of a couple days, she was in the ICU and intubated. Her organs began to fail and she was put on dialysis. Her Caringbridge page says she was diagnosed with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. She died in the early morning hours of July 23.
Steph was a critical care nurse. Her husband and Kate’s dad Thomas Dye is a Fargo Police Officer.
“It is a challenge because people have a professional life and a personal life you know, and it’s those perfect storms when both are kind of upside down at the same time that we kind of ran into, but we’re just trying to struggle well and just get better and better every day,” Thomas Dye said.
He said the support for their family from friends and especially from law enforcement, even as they were dealing with the loss of Officer Jake Wallin and critical injuries to Officers Tyler Hawes and Andrew Dotas after the July 14 shooting, has been remarkable.
“Kate was seeing all the generosity from friends and family and work and everybody in the community and she just wanted to know how she could help,” he said. “We originally were planning on just painting rocks and baking cookies for a sale at the end of the driveway. But I just knew that we could find her a way to make this real successful and it’s been mind-blowing how great everyone’s been to support this.”
Anyone who wishes to donate can also contribute to the family’s GoFundMe.
