By Amy McCaffree
Cover photo courtesy of Laura Carey
During an early morning run on July 16, 2025, local runner Sarah Clark Doxey, 48, was struck by a vehicle along the shoulder of South Perry Avenue on Spokane’s South Hill, east of Manito Golf Course. She later died at the hospital. She is survived by her husband, two teenage children and a loving community of fellow runners.
Sarah was running side-by-side with friend Sara Ambrose, heading south in the northbound lane. Neighborhood runners, cyclists and walkers frequently travel this route. “As a person who runs in the morning all the time, I have never thought about getting hit from behind, because I always run against traffic,” says Ambrose. “The driver must have been going so fast that our minds didn’t register the sound.”
In a split second, at 5:31 a.m., Ambrose’s left-arm tricep was clipped by the vehicle’s passenger-side mirror before the vehicle crashed into a tree. “Sarah had disappeared,” she recalls. Disoriented, she ran to a nearby home. Then she spotted Sarah, on the road farther ahead, and called 911. Neighbors, golf course maintenance staff and a runner ahead all rushed to the scene to provide aid. Paramedics quickly arrived.
At the hospital, Ambrose and friend Laura Carey gathered with Sarah’s family. The tragedy was major local news because the 17-year-old driver allegedly fled on foot before being arrested. The unnamed suspect has been criminally charged, and a trial is scheduled for September.
Ambrose and Carey want Sarah to be remembered as an amazing friend who was passionate about running. (Local news outlets have already covered Sarah’s prominent healthcare career.) “She loved running more than anyone I have met,” says Ambrose. “I was not yet a runner [when we first met in 2013], but Sarah told me that no one cares how fast you are. They only care that you’re showing up, having fun and making connections.”
Sarah taught Ambrose everything about running, she says. “She shared her confidence, encouragement and her running things, like leggings and water bottles,” recalls Ambrose. “When you spend hours and hours together running, you learn a lot about each other. It truly was like therapy because we could share at a very intense and beautiful level.” She was a get-up-and-go type of person, she adds. “Running was an exercise with a goal. That feeling of accomplishment was really important to her. Running lets you ‘run off your crazy’—a place to put your energy, anxieties, all your worries aside and to focus on yourself.” As her friend looking from the outside, reflects Ambrose, her taking the time for running was central to who she was because we were both busy professionals. “Running was a time to hang out as friends and get our workout in.”
Sarah especially enjoyed running events. “Any local race, she was happy to do. She loved race day,” says Ambrose. “She had incredible adrenaline on race day and ran faster than she thought she would.”
Laura Carey says Sarah is the reason she, too, became a runner. “I ran my first half marathon (in 2012) because of her. She was the one that gave me the confidence I needed to know it was possible for me.” Their first road-trip race, in 2016, was the Wine Country Half Marathon in Oregon, which inspired them to plan family vacations around marathons. “We spent years running hundreds of miles together,” says Carey.
Sarah was an achiever—and running was motivating for her because every workout or race was an achievement, says Ambrose. “She got injured over and over again because she pushed herself to do what she possibly could.” In 2021, Sarah achieved her goal of running a 50k race in St. Regis, Mont. (Carey ran the 30k).
Most recently, the three friends traveled to Eugene, Oregon, where Sarah ran a half-marathon in April. Ambrose’s last race with Sarah was the Mountain Magic Trail Race at Mount Spokane on June 29. For this fall, Carey and Sarah had already registered for the Big Bear Marathon in California. “It was going to be Sarah’s first since Chicago in 2023,” says Carey. “I don’t know how I’ll run marathons again. Every step reminds me that she’s not here anymore. But I also know I have to, because she wouldn’t want anything less for me.”
“I want Sarah to be remembered for her joyful miles,” says Ambrose. “She was so happy to be out there with a body that supported her to do all the things she wanted it to. She loved all things about the sport. I’m so lucky to have witnessed it and that she inspired me to start running in the first place.”
Currently, items memorializing Sarah are displayed at the tree crash site, but her friends would like to create a permanent outdoor memorial, like a plaque by her favorite rock-landscaped water fountain and strawberry patch along South Perry Avenue, not far from where she took her last running steps.
