Jessica Wallace, 24; Worked With Patients, Planned Medical Career

Jessica Wallace didn't waste a minute of her 24 years.

She was about to enter the University of Washington's medical school in the fall. She had a partner of five years whom she intended to marry. She enjoyed working with patients at the Lake Washington Kidney Center.

But her future was eclipsed by a rare form of cancer in her liver that doctors detected only eight weeks ago. Some people live for years with the disease, but after her third chemotherapy treatment, Miss Wallace died Aug. 13 at Swedish Hospital.

Early in life, she showed her parents that she was going to be special. As a youngster in the fifth grade, she told them, "You don't need to worry about my homework, I'll take care of it."

And she did, said her father, John Michael Wallace.

She grew increasingly independent. She rode the bus rather than depending on her parents for rides. She saved $10,000 for medical school. "She was quite frugal. She didn't like waste, wasn't ostentatious and lived simply," her father said.

Miss Wallace had a strong sense of fairness and quickly challenged what she considered wrong. Such attitudes endeared her to many lifelong friends, with whom she often drank tea and talked for hours.

She also enjoyed backpacking, reading - her favorite author was Jane Austen - watching avant garde films and listening to a wide range of music from modern folk to classical.

In her junior year at Garfield High School, Miss Wallace

spent a summer in Thailand as an exchange student - a place to which she returned after she enrolled at the University of Washington. She spent her junior year at the University of Chiang Mai, and planned to spend time there as a doctor.

"She loved the country, the food and the people, but was appalled at the sexism in the society," her father recalled.

In 1988, she met the man she intended to marry, Walter C. Oelwein. About two years ago, Miss Wallace discovered a lump in her neck, which was removed. But the cancer reappeared in June in her liver.

"We all realized it was an uphill battle," her father recalled.

Miss Wallace could cry at a sunset, carry a grudge for years and show impatience with bureaucracies, her friends say. But the patients she cared for and the staff she worked with at the Lake Washington Kidney Center in Seattle will recall her caring for other people.

"I think it was the blend of compassion and competence she has that would have made her a wonderful doctor. She cared about each person individually," said Mary Mason, a social worker at the kidney center.

"I admire the way she lived her life fully up until the last minute. She made the most of her 24 years. She didn't waste a minute of it, I'd say."

Besides her partner, Oelwein, and her father, she is survived by her mother, Susan Wallace; sister, Leah Wallace; and brother, David Wallace, all of Seattle; grandmothers, Margaret Howell Wheeler, of Lakewood, N.J. and Rosemary Wallace, of Jensen Beach, Fla.; and aunts, Sharon Howell of Seattle and Virginia Wallace of Jensen Beach, Fla.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at University United Methodist Temple, 1415 N.E. 43rd, Seattle.