Honoring a Life Cut Short

While death is often called the “snuffing out of life,” in Tessa Horan’s case it has inspired a rebirth among family, friends and even strangers to make sure that all living things are nurtured and cared for.

While volunteering in Tonga more than two years ago, Horan, 24 and a strong swimmer, was leading the local kids out for a swim when she was attacked and killed by a shark.

Rather than try to bury their grief, her extended family chose to use it as inspiration for all the causes she cared about.

On Friday, her father, Kevin Horan, sat amid a bustle of volunteers in the kitchen of his ex-wife’s home and the site of Tessa’s Community Garden. The new garden project donates food to Kitchen Angels and Food Depot, as well as to young mothers who can learn gardening skills and get paid for their work.

“The idea for this really went hand-in-hand with how Tessa felt about the world,” said Kevin. “When she went to work at Gemini Farms in Las Trampas, it really spoke to her. She loved growing so much she didn’t know if she wanted to do the Peace Corps.”

And that’s why her mother, Kristena Prater, and others will return to Tonga this year to establish a garden next to the library the Tessa Horan Memorial Fund has already built. “Tessa was really concerned about how the villagers ate,” said Prater, and wanted to teach them about organic gardening.

The inspiration for the garden dates to Tessa’s 16th year, when she worked as a helper to Lehigh Sheppard in her business, Fine Gardening. “At first, my take was, ‘I’m going to be babysitting a grumpy teenager all summer,’ ” said Sheppard. “But by the first week, I knew it would be a perfect fit.

“We started doing triathlons together — I was into that — but then she got me into rock climbing, because she was into that,” said Sheppard, and the two became good friends. While Sheppard had grown up in Colorado and been friends with Prater’s brothers, she and Kristena had never been close friends. “It was so interesting to me,” said Prater. “Lehigh was a contemporary of mine but became my daughter’s friend, and now has become my friend.”

After a middle-of-the-night epiphany when Prater realized a community garden would be exactly what Tessa would have wanted, the idea now seems to have flowed naturally from everyone who knew her.

Some 40 volunteers — from women at Esperanza to those at Kitchen Angels and others who are friends of Sheppard — now volunteer at the community garden, planted outside Prater’s home on Don Gaspar. Tessa also worked on the ski patrol at Ski Santa Fe with Sheppard and as a rafting guide, so there’s a large circle of friends to help out.

But there are also volunteers who never knew Tessa. Eliza Hemmen, 16, is working as a publicist and grantwriter for the Tessa Horan Foundation. “I never knew Tessa, but I’ve known Kristena since I was little,” Hemmen said.

“Anyone who wants to volunteer, can,” Sheppard said. But one of the garden’s chief goals is to provide work for young mothers. “We’ve set up a tepee and a fort so the kids can play while the moms work.” Some of the positions are paid.

Tony McCarty, executive director of Kitchen Angels, was surveying the garden Friday afternoon. “We can never have enough fresh produce, and food prices are up 30 percent,” he said. “This is local, it’s fresh, it’s organic and it’s free. This is what our clients, especially with compromised immune systems, should be eating.”

On Aug. 10, there will be a Garden-to-Table fundraising dinner at Tessa’s Community Gardens, catered by Abby Souza of Contour Catering, one of Tessa’s friends. The minimum donation is $50 a person. To make reservations, volunteer to work in the garden, or donate to the garden project, contact Lehigh Sheppard at (505) 660-2736. The Tessa Horan Memorial Fund is under the umbrella of the Global Mountain Fund, based in Albuquerque.

On the Air

Tessa Horan, a Peace Corps volunteer from Santa Fe who was killed two years ago by a tiger shark off the coast of Tonga, will be one of six people featured in a television program called “Day of the Shark.” The documentary will air at 8 p.m. today on the Discovery Channel. The documentary explores shark behavior at a particular place and time, through interviews with scientists and experts.