Bringing this over from the last thread.
JUN 29, 2019
Who was MacKenzie Lueck? A mentor, a beach and animal lover and an empowered woman
She used to bike to the Pacific Ocean. Years later, she’d re-create those days by putting on her bikini and basking in the sun that shines on the high-altitude desert that is Salt Lake City.
As a student at the University of Utah, she expressed feminist opinions and left one of the major political parties to register with a
conservative third party.
She competed on the swim team and played water polo at her high school in Southern California. At U. football games, she cheered in the student section
known as the MUSS.
[...]
“She's like a nurturer,” KS, one of Lueck’s sorority sisters at Alpha Chi Omega, said Wednesday. “She's almost a mother to me. She is one of those people [who is] always cooking for you. She wants to make sure you’re getting fed. She wants to make sure if you need a drink, that you have a drink.”
[...]
The friends also started a school club on breast cancer awareness. Besides being a worthy cause, CB said, it was a way to boost their extracurricular resumes for college applications. The activism also represented an early example of Lueck showing an appreciation for women’s issues.
[...]
Alpha Chi Omega consumed much of Lueck’s free time, her friends said. Besides mandating that members
maintain a 2.5 GPA, the chapter requires them to attend a certain number of social events and participate in philanthropic endeavors. The chapter’s charity work focuses on domestic violence awareness and prevention.
The sorority also gave Lueck her social circle. A semester after Lueck was a Little, KS pledged to Alpha Chi Omega and selected Lueck as her Big.
[...]
In one of her final Facebook posts, Lueck celebrated the anniversary of women’s suffrage. Her Instagram profile promoted “free the nips.”
KS said Lueck didn’t necessarily want women to go without bras or expose their nipples. Instead, the phrase can be used to promote the idea that
women shouldn’t be shamed for their bodies.
Lueck herself liked to spend free time on warm Salt Lake City days outside, enjoying the sun in a bikini, Stoner said — not that there was a lot of free time. Besides school and the sorority, Lueck held jobs. KS said her friend was a personal assistant to a family. At the time of her death, she worked at a Salt Lake City biological testing laboratory.
[...]
KS, who graduated in May with a degree in psychology, said Lueck appeared to be taking awhile to graduate because she sometimes reduced her class load to part time so she could also work.
[...]
Friends say they saw no personality changes in Lueck through the years. She continued to enjoy animals. She had hedgehogs, guinea pigs and a cat at the time of her death.
[...]
KS remembers a night in December. Lueck had been dating a man and hadn’t been spending much time with friends. All of a sudden, Lueck texted Stoner and invited her to go to a Main Street restaurant. KS said Lueck even offered to pay — perhaps because she still saw herself as KS’s Big.
[...]
Lueck’s family has declined interview requests. The Lueck friends who spoke to The Tribune have said they do not know Ajayi or why Lueck would have been meeting someone at 3 a.m. in a park in North Salt Lake, as Salt Lake City police have said occurred.
[...]
