Born in San Mateo, California, Priscilla worked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, setting chokers for a logging company and serving as a firefighter there. She moved to Silverton, Colorado, in 1978 where she worked as a typesetter for the Silverton Standard and Miner, was a hoist operator underground for Standard Metals at Gladstone on the main level, and was an EMT for San Juan Search and Rescue. After her foot was crushed in a mine accident she had her first child, Hannah Rose Warren, in 1981 with her husband Mark Warren, a long time San Juan miner.
She moved to Ouray in 1982, where she worked as a dental assistant, volunteered as an EMT for the Ouray Ambulance, and worked nights at The Outlaw Restaurant. While in Ouray she had a second child, John Paul Summers, whose father, John Michael Summers, was at the time work as a lineman on Ophir Pass. John Paul was born in 1986.
Priscilla moved with the kids to Eugene, Oregon, in 1988. She won a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Oregon, was a huge Ducks fan, and then captured a master’s degree in social work from Portland State University in 1994.
Priscilla subsequently worked as a therapist and counselor for young people at various schools in Oregon and New Mexico.
She particularly loved camping and hiking, traveling to Mexico and windsurfing with the kids at Blue Mesa. She always displayed a wild and adventurous spirit, bagging tall mountain peaks, roaming the deserts of the Southwest, the high country of Colorado and the great forests of the Pacific Northwest.
She battled cancer fiercely for 24 years but finally succumbed on June 14, 2021, at home in Marana, Arizona.
She was a kind and gentle woman of extraordinary courage.
Her wishes are that donations in her memory be made to the “Northern Jaguar Project” in Tucson, Arizona.
Priscilla is survived by Hannah and John Paul; their children Karma, Luna, Braiden, Mia and Everest; sisters Penny Ely, formerly of Silverton, Pam Johnson of Oregon, and Polly Cook of Silver City, New Mexico; and brothers Peter and Paul of California and Oregon, respectively.
