Elizabeth Erikson

ELIZABETH VIRGINIA ERIKSON Elizabeth Virginia Erikson, age 57, passed away July 21, 2013, from complications following an emergency surgery. She was born on December 9, 1955 in Bakersfield California, and attended school in Sacramento, Ca. where both her parents were educators. She started what became a long nursing career as a candy-striper, volunteering at local hospitals at age 15. When she graduated, in 1974, from Del Campo High School, in Sacramento, she went on to San Francisco State University, where she played softball and earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1978. She later went on, in 1981, to Sacramento State College and obtained a California School Nursing Credential in 1982. Her first job out of college was as a Public Health Nurse in the inner city of Oakland Ca., working with under-privileged children. She moved to Sausilito Ca, in 1985, where she worked as a staff nurse for a Registry that sent her to work at nearly every hospital in the San Francisco area. It was there, in 1986, that she met her life mate and companion Jeffrey Lynn Blackburn. They moved to Butte, Montana, in 1988, where she worked at the local hospital and surgical center as a pediatric nurse and surgical nurse while she helped put Jeffrey through engineering school and graduate school. She survived cancer, in 1991, after a nearly year long battle with chemo and radiation therapies at the City of Hope in Pasadena, Ca.. In 1994, she was blessed with a son, Jackson Cole Erikson- Blackburn after being told she would be unable to have children. She always called him her "miracle baby" and named him after her father Jack. After Jeff finished graduate school, in 1996, they moved to the beach and after living with her father at Monarch Beach, Ca for several months, in 1997 they moved to Wickenburg, Az. She has resided in Wickenburg since that time and worked as a RN and Asst. Director of Surgery at the area hospital and as a RN at a local treatment center working with young women with eating disorders. In 2011, she accepted a position as the Medical Case Manager for The Ryan White Foundations Ebony House caring for African American patients suffering from A.I.D.S.. Liz said it was her "dream job" and she so loved those she cared for, not just there, but throughout her 36 year career in Nursing. She held a Nursing licence in California as well as a Public Health Certificate, a Nursing license in Arizona where she was also PACU/ACLS certified and in Montana, where she was also a member of the Montana Nursing Association. Liz loved swimming, the beach, watching people, skiing, hiking, camping, sailing and watching her son grow up in a small town playing soccer and baseball and finally graduating from High School in May of this year. She loved her patients and the nurses and doctors she worked with along her way and she always inserted a little humor everywhere she went. She dearly loved her family and played endlessly with the grandchildren. She would swim and play cards and draw pictures with them whenever she saw them and they dearly love her. She was preceded in death by her mother Dorothy M. and her father Jack T. Erikson. She leaves, in great sorrow, Jeffrey and Jackson of Wickenburg, her only sister Catherine Santillana and husband Randy, of Fullerton Ca., as well as stepchildren Justin Blackburn and wife Tara, Jeremy Blackburn and wife Jessica, Jesse Blackburn and wife Amanda, as well as grandchildren Jake, Jaden, Joey, Jarrett and granddaughters Lindsey, and Elaine. The family asks that in lieu of flowers or gifts, that donations be given to Ebony House of Phoenix and also wish to express their deepest gratitude and heartfelt condolences to those who have helped Liz and lost her as a friend.