Karen Desperately Wanted to Live Her Life. She Also Wanted to Be Free to Choose How It Ended.
From the time she was young, Karen Oelschlaeger lived as if she knew the clock was ticking. Whatever she was doing — traveling, volunteering, studying — she was all in.
As a teenager, she once set off at 2 a.m. from her home in Charlotte, NC, to drive hours to the beach just to see the sun rise. In high school, while her peers were planning proms and parties, she spent her free time volunteering for the Sierra Club’s Sierra Student Coalition and raising money for Save the Children. During a yearlong college study-abroad program in Spain, she ate only Spanish food, spoke only Spanish and opted to rent a room in an apartment with a Spanish woman and her daughter instead of living in the student dorms. And in 2007, before completing her master’s degree in social work and earning a law degree, she started a dog-walking and pet-sitting company just to prove to herself that she could launch a successful business and fend for herself financially.
“That was Karen,” says her mom, Linda Oelschlaeger. “She was compelled to live more fully and dive deeper into experiences than most people. She was strong-willed, smart, passionate and funny.”
Meghan Place, a colleague of Karen’s who became a close friend, admired her directness.
