`Kim Would Do Anything For Anyone' -- Woman Slain Helping Another Is Mourned

KENT - Who would have thought that the thing Kimberly Starkenburg loved best in life would lead to her death?

Above all, she enjoyed helping people. She was killed Monday helping a person she barely knew.

Many of the nearly 200 people who attended her memorial service yesterday afternoon in Kent cried because they would miss her. Other cried from outrage, because the man accused of killing her - Charles Corliss, now a fugitive - has killed before.

``It's so unfair,'' said Starkenburg's best friend, Jackie Crisp. ``Kim would do anything for anyone. She only wanted to help. I'm so mad I can't stand it.''

The death is a bitter pill for her parents, who taught her the importance of helping others.

Glenn Starkenburg clutched a portrait of his daughter outside the family burial plot. He stared at it and said he thought such a gentle woman did not deserve this violent death. She was shot twice in the chest while helping a co-worker move away from an ex-boyfriend.

``I don't understand. Society is so violent. . . . We need to keep the anger alive, we need people to be aware,'' he said.

Kimberly Starkenburg, 23, lived with her parents in West Seattle.

A cosmetologist, she hoped to become a data processer and was taking computer classes at South Seattle Community College.

She had been a member and leader of Job's Daughters, a civic organization for teen-age girls. Even after leaving the group, she continued to help out by driving the girls to ceremonies and the beach and by buying flowers for the other leaders.

Not that Kimberly Starkenburg was perfect. Outspoken, opinionated, nosy, that was Kimberly, recalled her friends. At the service, Crisp read a poem she'd written that put it like this:

``Her opinion she always voiced.

Did I want to hear it?

I had no choice.''

Kimberly Starkenburg alwaysspoke her mind. She was not the sort to make a great politician, but the kind everyone needs as a friend.

Especially a person in trouble.

Which is what Tamera Farrington was.

Kimberly Starkenburg had been working at Fantastic Sam's hair salon in Renton only a month, but she couldn't help notice that Farrington, her co-worker, would show up with bruises on her face. So when other co-workers asked if Starkenburg would bring her pickup truck to help Farrington get away from the man who'd been causing the bruises, she agreed.

``She knew this girl was hurt and thought, `we've got to get her out of there before she's hurt again,''' said Jill Starkenburg, 20, Kimberly's sister.

When Kimberly Starkenburg and three others went to Farrington's Fall City home Monday night, Corliss allegedly stepped out of the bedroom carrying a handgun. Farrington escaped, but the three other women were ordered to kneel on the floor. Two of the three women survived the bullets; Starkenburg did not.

April Williams, 23, is in satisfactory condition at Harborview Hospital. Brenda Mhoni, 21, was discharged from Overlake Hospital late Thursday.

Corliss, 50, is believed to have fled the area. He was convicted in 1966 of kidnapping a man in Montana, robbing him of $36 and shooting him in the back of the head. He was paroled in 1985. Corliss has been charged by King County prosecutors with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of assault.

The Starkenburgs ask that any contributions be made to Friends of Diane, P.O. Box 714, Mercer Island, WA 98040. The victims'-rights advocacy group, was formed after Diane Ballasiotes was abducted and murdered by a state work-release inmate in 1988.