Erica Duba Hayes

With heavy hearts, we announce the passing of Erica Duba Hayes, 26, of Fort Collins, CO. She passed away peacefully and with grace on February 15, 2019.

Erica was born August 3, 1992, in Fort Collins. She attended Traut Elementary, Kinard Middle School and graduated from Fort Collins High School in 2010. She was a National Honor Society student and played both high school and club softball. She attended Willamette University, graduating in 2014 Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Sociology. While at Willamette she volunteered all four years at a local no-kill cat shelter and a local elementary school and spent her spring breaks working in community service.

Upon graduating from Willamette, Erica moved to Seattle, Washington. She served with Lutheran Volunteer Corps for one year, placed with a non-profit organization working to find housing solutions for homeless families. She continued with the non-profit for an additional year and then worked at a before/after school program in Seattle before recently returning to Fort Collins.

Erica was an incredibly gifted writer and from an early age loved reading. She enjoyed spending time in libraries and art galleries. She also loved animals, especially horses and cats, and had pictures of our family cats tattooed on one of her arms. She greatly enjoyed working as an intern at the Minneapolis Zoo the summer before her senior year at Willamette.

Erica traveled extensively and always spent time truly exploring and seeing the places she visited. In addition to many family trips growing up, she traveled to Europe during high school and attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand for a study-abroad semester during college. While there she spent time studying the Maori culture, including being invited to visit a Maori reservation, and took a long bus ride on her own to watch the All Blacks play South Africa in a rugby match. Her return to the States included a side trip to Australia where she did a dive trip at the Great Barrier Reef and attended a Cold Play concert in Sydney. Other memorable trips include Hawaii for her 25th birthday, the Canadian Rockies and traveling across the country by car starting in New York City, stopping at Churchill Downs to see the horses, visiting friends and family along the way and driving up the Pacific Coast on her way back to Seattle.

Erica is survived by her parents, Susan and Jim Hayes, her sister, Erin, grandfather, Roger Duba, aunts and uncles Jim and Joy (Duba) Reid, Laura (Duba) Piotter and Bob and Diane Hayes, and her dear cousins Katie Reid, Olivia (Piotter) and Peter Arnegard and Amelia Piotter. She was preceded in death by her grandparents Phyllis Duba and James and Betty Hayes.

Erica left us far too early. She was a kind and compassionate soul with a strong sense of social justice and she cared deeply for the less fortunate, especially children and animals. We will remember her great smile, her beautiful red hair and her contagious laugh. We will remember the good times we had together and the kind person she was. We will miss her dearly and she will remain in our hearts forever. She is at peace.

We request you not send flowers or anything similar; your thoughts and prayers are enough. If you are so moved, please leave a memory of Erica and/or donate in her name to one of Erica's favorite charities:

Salem Friends of Felines www.sfof.org
Rainier Scholars www.rainierscholars.org
Facing Homelessness www.facinghomelessness.org