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I’d moved to L.A., but once when I was visiting Seattle, I saw Stefanie at a party. I hadn’t seen her in years. She was like, “You gotta come see my band! I’m doing great!” And she put me on the guest list at RKCNDY. It was a really fun night. Stefanie gave me the single for “Lorna,” and I recall being really happy for her.

ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON There was something about Stefanie where there was a lot of fun and a lot of smiles and a lot of laughter, but there was also some kind of a cloud. She seemed to have had a really troubled past. She moved to Seattle from San Francisco, oddly enough, to get away from dope. Seattle seems like a ridiculous place to go if you’re trying to avoid heroin.

It’s hard for me to imagine Stefanie being a middle-aged woman.

JAMES BURDYSHAW I rejected her because I thought she was doing too much dope, and I thought she was too obnoxious, but I stayed her friend. She was workin’ the pizza places and I’d show up and she’d feed me, and then we’d talk and we always would kiss, and we were very close. I shoulda been her boyfriend, because she was a wonderful girl.

MATT DRESDNER I hated heroin usage. I hated junkies. I was very, very, very anti, and while Stefanie and I were dating, part of the platform of our relationship was she could not be involved in any of that stuff or I was gone. And as far as I know, she was clean during that time. It made it all the more painful for me that that’s how Stefanie finally did herself in, because she had been doing so well.

VALERIE AGNEW We had been looking for her that weekend. We were supposed to have a meeting at the OK Hotel about going on tour. It was really weird that she was MIA, but we weren’t terribly worried at that point. I remember Selene and I going by her house and looking up at her apartment window, and her light was on and she had a red lightbulb in it. I remember having this premonition. I was like, “Oh, shit.” I had a really bad feeling because it was in the middle of the day and the sun was shining, and I started freaking out. Then we got a call the next day saying she hadn’t shown up for work, which was really unlike her.

When we got home to our apartment, we got a call from her roommate, who’d gotten back from her camping trip at the end of the weekend and found Stefanie.

SELENE VIGIL-WILK It was devastating because I’d never experienced that before. Stefanie’s roommate called me, and Valerie and I just jumped in the van, and we actually hit a parked car while driving up to her house on Capitol Hill.

VALERIE AGNEW We got there, and Stefanie was still in her room. Selene and I both went into her room and sat there with her for a little while, and I remember surveying the scene and trying to piece it together. We didn’t suspect foul play, but it didn’t make any sense. She was supposed to meet us that night at the OK Hotel. Why was she alone? Was somebody here and they left? Those kinds of questions were going through our head. I just remember it being really hard to think. You feel like you’re underwater.

ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON Valerie called me and I just got in a cab. I went up to Stef’s place and met Valerie and Selene there and it really seemed fake. Have you ever had a friend die? It really feels like you’re sleepwalking, like you’re in a dream and you just want to wake up.

STEVE MORIARTY I took a cab up to Stefanie’s house, and she was dead in her bedroom. What do you do when somebody dies? You have all this energy and horror and there’s nothing you can do about it except wait for them to come and take her.

ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON When the coroner or the EMT or whoever took her away, they had her in a body bag on a stretcher and one of her dreads came out of the bag as they walked past us. And seeing that was like, Okay, that was really real, this is Stefanie’s shell. She’s not here anymore.

DON BLACKSTONE I was a really good friend of Stefanie’s. She introduced me to my first wife. I talked to our booking agent Julianne Andersen on the phone and she said, “Stefanie OD’d.