Erika Owen was a woman who loved her dog and loved people

To people who knew and loved Erika Owen, it seemed absolutely like her to go after her dog when it fell through pond ice last Sunday.

In her rescue attempt, Owen also fell into the icy water, costing the 28-year-old her life. Kairos, the young sheltie she adored, perished with her in the middle of a 150-foot-wide pond at Chisholm Creek Park in north Wichita.

Devastating as her death is, it makes sense to her family and church friends because they knew her to be so loving and thoughtful – to all people, to all creatures.

The timing of the tragedy could not be more significant, says her boyfriend, Silas Hibbs.

Owen had grown up with shelties, a breed of herd dog. She showed shelties as a girl, in 4-H. For years, she had nurtured a sheltie named C.J., with a deformity that left him essentially three-legged. The dog died at age 17, on March 1, 2014 – exactly a year to the day before Owen and Kairos fell through the ice.

“Kairos” is a Greek word meaning “perfect timing,” Hibbs noted.

Owen knew that the one-year anniversary of C.J.’s death would be tough for her, Hibbs said.

On the very day she died, she went to the park pond to reflect, to “talk to God” and to let Kairos run, Hibbs said.

She and Kairos had visited the pond before. In early February, she set up the perfect photo of her and Kairos, side by side along the pond, with a setting sun in the background. In the picture, posted to her Facebook, she is smiling and crouched beside Kairos. The dog stands in a regal posture.

Owen’s love for animals wasn’t limited to her own pets. She had volunteered for a dog rescue effort. She always stopped to help strays, said Casey Casamento, lead pastor at City Life Church. Now, one of the memorials to her is with the Kansas Humane Society.

On Thursday, several women from City Life Church, where Owen served as an assistant to the pastor and worked with children, met to talk about her. Some of their best memories revolve around Owen’s doting on her dogs. When she had someone dog-sit for her, she wrote out a full page of directions on how to care for her beloved pets. Once, she crafted the list “in first person” for how to take care of C.J.

“I’m a little high maintenance,” it said.

Anyone who regularly walked through College Hill Park would have seen Owen and Kairos there, the church women said. The pair sauntered through the park daily.

The friends also described her as someone who had become devoted to children. On Fridays, her day off, she volunteered hours at a time to baby-sit for a charity that helps young mothers with small children. She wanted direct contact with children, to love on them.

On other days, church members would hear her say: “I don’t have any kids of my own, but on Sunday morning I have 150.” Owen was referring to the children of the church members who are cared for during the service, at Orpheum Theatre in downtown Wichita, where the church meets. She was director of Kids Life, which provides services for the church members’ children. She oversaw the curriculum for children and ministered to them.

Outside the rooms where the children are cared for, she helped sign in and sign out the children with their parents. She had an engaging way with kids, bending down to them and leaning in, so she could look right into their eyes and give them her whole focus.

One of the toughest things the church members will have to deal with this coming Sunday is sign-in and sign-out at the children’s area.

Owen won’t be there, in the middle of the children.

But she left her words. On a column where the children and parents gather, she recently used colored chalk to write, in elaborate letters, a religious message. “The Gospel,” it begins. “God’s Plan For Me … .”

Although Owen’s family moved to Ohio when she was a girl and she graduated from high school as a Buckeye, she had Kansas roots and came from a family of Kansas State University alums. Hibbs, 27, met her through friends when she was a student at K-State.

“I knew at the time that she was special,” he said.

“She just wore her heart on her sleeve” and embodied “pure genuineness,” he said.

She became known for thoughtful actions. One of the church women, Erica Klunder, was working at a clothing store one day when Owen came up behind her and quickly slipped into her back pocket a pair of earrings that Klunder had coveted. Klunder wore the earrings on Thursday.

Owen surprised other people with flowers. She sent daily text messages to see if her family and friends were OK. When another church woman was feeling anxious about student teaching, Owen invited her over for homemade chili and cornbread. When another’s husband was deployed overseas, Owen reached out to her. On a mission trip, she helped plant a garden for impoverished Haitians.

Well before her death, she made a decision to have her organs donated, to help others.

She wouldn’t want to be glorified, her friends and family said. She would want any credit for anything she did to go to Jesus, to God.

Funeral service is set for 11 a.m. Saturday at Journey the Way Church, 147 S. Hillside. Devastating as her death is, friends and family say they take comfort from their faith that her selflessness and kindness has given her a place in Heaven and from their belief that her actions came from a desire to be like Jesus.

Her parents, Glen and Donita Owen, have come to Wichita for what they call a celebration of their daughter’s life. Along with Hibbs, their daughter’s boyfriend, and Casamento, the pastor, the parents gathered in a room at a hotel to talk about their daughter Thursday morning.

Her father held his daughter’s Bible, filled with her underlining of scripture and her notes in the margins.

His eyes turned red, and in a voice shaking with emotion, almost down to a whisper, he looked at the book that holds so much meaning for him.

“My treasure,” he said.

This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 6:55 AM with the headline "Erika Owen was a woman who loved her dog and loved people."