Best Friends Kary Anne Anderson Is One Of Many Who Mourn The Loss Of Roxy Wankmueller, A Vibrant Child Who Had Only Begun To Tap Into Life

Since they were toddlers, Kary Anne Anderson and Roxanne Rose Wankmueller traipsed the West Central neighborhood hand-in-hand.

Selling Kool-Aid in the summer and baking cookies and candy at Christmas, the best friends were a fixture in the working class neighborhood south of Audubon Elementary School.

“Them two were inseparable,” said Pete Bennett, Roxy’s grandfather. “You’d see two little blond-haired kids going down the the street and you knew it was them two.”

Inseparable until New Year’s Day, when they were trapped in a basement as a fire broke out upstairs. The fire killed Roxy, 9, and left Kary , 10, with serious injuries.

It was their freewheeling spirit that contributed to the terrible outcome that day, according to friends and family.

In addition to their own West Central homes, the two girls frequently played at the home of Pete and Betty Bennett, Roxy’s grandparents, and the home of Sharon Wolfrom, Roxy’s stepmom.

All four houses are within a two-block area just south of Audubon Elementary. That day the girls could have been at any one of the houses.

When the fire broke out in Wolfrom’s house on West Shannon Jan. 1, she didn’t know the girls were playing in the basement. She told firefighters no one was inside.

By the time firefighters found the girls, Roxy was dead and Kary was in critical condition.

“She’ll be really lost without Roxy,” Wolfrom said of Kary’s return to the neighborhood Friday after her hospital stay. “We all will, really.”

While Roxy charmed almost everyone who crossed her path, she was the central figure in her father’s life.

Never have a father and daughter been closer, Wolfrom said.

“If you ever wanted to hurt me, this is how you would do it,” said Joe Wankmueller. “Roxy was No. 1 in my life.”

Roxy’s mother died when her daughter was 3 and the family lived in Cheyenne, Wyo. The 39-year-old construction worker moved to Spokane so his daughter could be close to her grandparents.

“I felt so sorry for her when her mom died,” Wankmueller said of his daughter. “A little girl with no mother - that was so sad.”

A motherless child, Roxy adored her father. She called him “Papa Joe.” He called her his “German princess.”

“I never had to spank her. She always made the right choices,” Wankmueller said.

“She really was a superhappy girl. And I’m so thankful for that.”

Except for picking other people’s tulips in the spring and occasionally cheating at cards, Roxy was rarely in trouble.

And when she did get caught, the first words out of her mouth inevitably were, “Don’t tell Papa.”

By moving back to West Central, Wankmueller plopped Roxy in the middle of a built-in support system. No matter what time of day, or what day of the week, there was always an adult around who loved Roxy.

On their way to and from school, Roxy and Kary would stop off at the Bennetts’ home for food and use of the bathroom.

When she needed the company of siblings or a mother figure, Roxy went to Wolfrom’s house.

It was only after Roxy’s death last week that the family realized how great their neighborhood is, Wankmueller said.

“I never really thought about the word community until now,” he said. “But now I know.”

The outpouring in the wake of the tragedy was overwhelming, he said.

The school staff provided food for the wake, neighbors sent over casseroles and plates of cookies, and a stranger stopped and gave one of Roxy’s cousins $10.

In response, the family has asked people to include Kary and the firefighters in their prayers.

“That’s the one thing we can do as a community,” Wankmueller said.

It was the security and comfort of that community that allowed Roxy’s independent personality to flourish, her family said.

“She was very unique, very much her own person,” Wolfrom said.

With money they raised by doing odd jobs, Kary and Roxy would walk down the block to Shari’s Restaurant and order a meal.

“They just liked to pretend they were little adults over there - you know, the girls out to lunch,” Wolfrom said.

While her father and grandmother are Catholic, Roxy opted to attend the Ridgeview Christian Center, her dad said. There she participated in the Missionettes, a church-school program for girls.

Still a child who played with Barbies, Roxy was about to blossom, her family said.

“She had so much potential,” her grandmother said. “She was going places with her life.”

The missed opportunities are what the family has trouble understanding.

She’ll never be able to tap the college trust fund set up by her maternal grandparents.

She’ll never wear her first training bra, a Christmas present from her stepsister, Lindsay.

She never used the chemistry set her dad bought her.

Tina Wankmueller, 17, couldn’t wait to show her younger cousin how to master the Donkey Kong video game she received for Christmas.

At her funeral last week, Roxy wore the new clothes she bought with her Christmas money for the first time.

“She couldn’t wait for school to start back up, so she could wear those clothes,” said Tina Wankmueller, who lives with the Bennetts.

Betty Bennett had planned to let Roxy take her to Chuck E. Cheese last Friday for her 60th birthday. Instead she went to the girl’s funeral.

After the funeral, the family took Roxy back to her birthplace, Cheyenne, to bury her next to her mother.

“She’ll always be my sweet little girl,” Wankmueller said. “That’s how I’ll remember.”

Inside the coffin were various little-girl things: three hand-made cloth dolls from when Roxy was a baby, all named “Suzie”; a pendant with half of a heart (Kary has the other half); and her mother’s rosary beads.

“I’m going to bury those beads this time,” Wankmueller said. “The only reason I was saving them was for her.”