Kendall Rae

So she was the fourth child of six children in her family, and her and her older sister, Christine, were the only two girls out of all of them.

And the town that they grew up in was a very small village in Norton Sound, which is on the western coast of Alaska.

And not only is it in a remote area, but it has a population of just 700 people, and most of the community is Native Alaskan.

And Sonia was well-known in the area, mainly because of her very outgoing and bubbly, friendly type of personality.

And people who knew her described her as goofy.

as fun and having a positive attitude pretty much all the time.

But she wasn't just known because she was an extrovert.

She was also a star athlete on the local basketball team, which made her prominent throughout Norton Sound.

Then in 2002, Sonia graduated from high school and she moved to Nome, Alaska.

Now, even though Nome's population in 2003 was about 3,554 people, it is considered a city in that area, and Sonia decided to move there for better job opportunities so that she could save money for college, and eventually her goal was to move to Hilo, Hawaii, and...

I don't blame her.

Beautiful place.

And she was taking that goal very seriously.

When she first got to Nome, she started working at the administrative desk of a local hospital.

And then shortly after that, she entered the Arctic Native Brotherhood pageant with the hope of earning some scholarship money for college.

And this isn't what you would typically think of when you think of a pageant.

Instead, it was really a celebration of the native Alaskan heritage and something that Sonia was really proud of.

So this was really an exciting time for Sonia in her life.

I mean, she was prepping towards new goals, but she was also doing a bunch of new things in the meantime.

And it got even better because just a couple of months after she arrived in Nome, her best friend, Timory, moved there too and started living with Sonia.