Abby Lokits met her future husband, Sean, when the pair were in college together in Missouri. On the way to Virginia for Thanksgiving in 2014, when Abby would first meet Sean’s large family (there are nine Lokits siblings), they stopped to pick up his older sister, Alyssa, in Nashville.
“She was just magnetic,” Abby Lokits (which rhymes with rockets) told Runner’s World. “It was like we had always known each other, you know? Every person she interacted with, whether it was for the first time or someone she had known for years, it was just so much joy and kindness and compassion and support. It was like, I just met my buddy.”
Alyssa Lokits Family Remembers Runner Killed in Nashville: We Cant Be Afraid in Nashville, at age 34. She was shot and killed on a popular running trail in the city in daylight. An arrest has been made in the case.
As her family grieves her loss, they want the world to remember Alyssa for how she lived, not the circumstances of her death.
When Abby and Alyssa were together, they would go out for 3- to 4-mile runs and hike in the mountains. Back at home in their respective cities—Abby and Sean Lokits live in Denver with their three children—Alyssa and Abby kept each other accountable in their training via text message.
“We kind of bonded over our love for just being active,” Lokits said. “She was very much about holistically being healthy.”
Alyssa’s fascination with health was part of her curiosity about, well, everything. She taught herself at least four languages: Arabic, Russian, German, and Spanish. She traveled extensively overseas. She once bought a house, fixed it up—and flipped it.
“She was brilliant, but she wasn’t flashy about it at all,” Lokits said. “She just wanted to learn. She wanted to soak up any and all information about the world.”
Alyssa had a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. She worked in tech, as a product manager for a cyber security company. It was a very male-dominated field, and she “she just kicked ass,” Lokits said.
Outside of work, Alyssa educated young women in STEM and served on the board of directors of a domestic violence shelter. “She was an advocate for women victims,” Lokits said. “She was a pillar for women. She made it her life’s mission to lift people up. She was the best of us.”
Her death, an act of shocking violence, is all the more painful because of the ways Alyssa tried to help women. Her family, however, is adamant that women runners shouldn’t be fearful. They should keep running.
“We just can’t be afraid, because I know that she would not be afraid,” Lokits said. “She was fierce and strong and she would get back out there. And I know that it feels scary to get back out there. We have to, we have to keep running, and we have to keep moving and loving each other.”
On the family GroupMe chat, Abby had encouraged the members of the active Lokits family to sign up for a Thanksgiving turkey trot this year in Virginia. The rest of the family is still planning to run in Alyssa’s honor.
“Knowing her, she was such a planner, we were kind of chuckling that she probably was the first one out of all of us to register,” Lokits said.
On October 21, in Nashville, nearly 500 people turned out for a run in honor of Alyssa. Members of the family went to the event and stood in the crowd, but they didn’t identify themselves. They drew comfort from the turnout and being among the people, Lokits said, and since then they’ve heard from runners all over the world who have Give A Gift.
The family is planning the ways they’ll honor Alyssa’s legacy.
“We want to emulate who she was, and she was joy, she was love, she was kindness,” Lokits said. “She was not anger, and she was not resentment, and she was not bitterness. We want communities to come together and love each other, to care for each other, to protect each other, to watch out for each other.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World Running Was His Life. Then Came Putins War, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
