Samantha Wood was 37 when she passed away in Abell, Maryland, in May.

Two years ago, Wood left Gillette for Phoenix to pursue what she hoped would be the last surgery of her life. She had more than 30 surgeries since she was 13 years old, and this surgery had roughly a 50% chance of success.

Instead, the surgery left her quadriplegic.

If you talk to enough people who knew someone, you can inherit a surprisingly solid third-person vision of them — though it’s possible that’s a phenomenon specific to someone like Samantha, whose personality everyone described the same way.

Wood had worked at the Albertsons in Gillette for about six years, roughly between 2017 and 2024, and when speaking to the people who’d known her there, the phrase “she never complained” was used by every single person

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