Sarah Catherine Koers

A graveside service will be held on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at Southern Wisconsin Veterans Cemetery at 11:00 am. There will be a luncheon to follow at Route 20, 14001 Washington Ave., Sturtevant.
Please come and celebrate my best girl and best friend ~ Rocco
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Yes, there is clock time & island time. The former is measured in units of anticipation, something that one counts down. T
he latter is the unquantifiable swirl between dawn & twilight, tourists traffic in the sun.
Off the island, we don't have tells. The women don't insist on handstrung agate necklaces. The men's hands aren't contracted into fists as if they continue to grasp an oar's
handle well after the boat has been tied off.
Before they are shored up, some cottages migrate toward the beach. Curiosity about what's not one's own is not just a human affliction.
I know this is mine because nowhere else I go replaces it.
"Insular," by Sarah Koers
Sarah Catherine Koers lost her courageous battle with cancer on October 11, 2025, passing away peacefully at the too-young age of 48 in Sheboygan Falls.
She is survived by her husband of 11 years, Rocco; mother, Barbara Kendall; father, Pharis Brooks; mother-in-law, Shirley Koers; brother, Erik (Sarah) Brooks; niece, Shelby Brooks; nephew, Christian Brooks; aunt, Kathleen Magmer; stepsister, Denessa Redding; stepbrother, Ken Kendall, and many other family and friends. Sarah was preceded in death by her stepfather, David Kendall; and grandparents, John and Mary Magmer. (She would also want Skinny, her four-legged best friend, mentioned here too.)
Sarah fought her metastatic breast cancer incredibly hard for more than five years, far outliving her prognosis, an example of courage and compassion against even the longest odds. She maintained her quality of life until the end, and the compassionate care of her mother, husband, and the staff at Sharon S. Richardson Community Hospice brought dignity to her final weeks.
The world is a better place because Sarah was in it.
Sarah liked to label herself insular. Yes, it was spelled out in ALL CAPS on her license plate, and it was the title of her self-published works of poetry she shared with family several years ago. But in many ways she lived a life opposite of insularity.
Ask those who knew her.
"A wonderful woman," one high school friend wrote on social media. "The world has lost a bright light."
Indeed, others remembered her "creativity and loving heart her amazing soul" "a lovely, beautiful free spirit a breath of life."
Sarah was "kind an inspiration" "a strong and powerful woman" and "one of the nicest people I worked with always with a smile."
"A beautiful soul whose light shown brightly even on her darkest days." "We loved her unique take on life and her brave heart and determination and fight."
Said one college friend: "Even though someone may not have seen another person in so many years, a person is still impossible to forget. She easily fell into that category."
"Beautiful person inside and out and so very smart in so many cool ways," a friend said. "Effing cool," wrote another.
We love the memory from one of her lifelong best friends, Joe Valenzuela: "After a 5+ year battle with cancer she chose to stop treatment and go out on her own terms. This is exactly what I loved about her. Always did things her own way."
"I'm going to watch Mermaids in your honor tonight." (Maybe we all should.)
What a legacy – Sarah packed a lot of life into her 48 years.
And could she write! "Easily the best writer I have had in my teaching career of 35 years," wrote one of her Thomas More High School teachers. "She was one in a million."
From her poetry to her hand-written letters to her smart and biting humor in text messages and emails, Sarah was an incredible writer, sometimes finding it easier to put on paper what was too difficult to say. From an early age, she shared hopes, dreams and fears on the printed page in a style that was all her own.
Sarah was born on June 16, 1977, in Milwaukee to Barbara (Magmer) and Pharis Brooks. She attended grade school at St. Matthew's and St. Veronica's on Milwaukee's South Side, then Thomas More High School, where she graduated in 1995.
One of her proudest accomplishments was graduating from UW-Milwaukee with a degree in English. It was a long journey to get that degree, but she got it. She had started at Marquette University, transferring to Northland College after a semester. Sarah loved it at Northland. It broke her heart to see it close, but she was happy to visit the college one last time on a trip to Ashland with her family in the year before she passed away.
Sarah's jobs were as unique as she was, and focused on helping others (of course). From her early work with L'Arche at a Clinton, Iowa, group home for the intellectually disabled – where she'd meet lifelong friends Bob and Birdie – to roles with Lutheran Financial Services, Walworth County, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Banner Health, she worked hard and took her work personally.
She also worked in public safety dispatch, meeting her husband Rocco on the job at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Oh, and there was that stint as a security guard for a marijuana dispensary in Arizona; be sure to ask her about that in heaven. (Also ask her about her time playing high school tennis and roller derby but we digress.)
The story of Sarah and Rocco is one of deep and enduring love through some of the darkest times a couple can endure. It is a love to which we can all aspire. Rocco's good humor, positivity, compassion, strength and caring nature saved Sarah's life, so we could have her on this earth for longer than we hoped.
What a gift you were to Sarah and are to us, Rocco. Thank you.
Sarah loved to travel – a passion stoked by her grandparents, who she kept close long after their deaths. Paintings that had hung in her grandparents' home now hung in hers, and in her living room was their fourth-generation rocking chair.
Some of her fondest memories were the trips her grandparents took her and her brother on, ostensibly to see ballparks in each city they visited -- even though their grandfather never really cared for baseball. They came to realize this later, and those games were really just a reason to travel. They did a lot of it, packing into the wood panel station wagon for road trips across the Upper Midwest. Each city included a ballpark stop. They sat in their own section at cavernous Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, three of maybe 5,000 fans there that night. They marveled at the Metrodome. They saw history at old Tiger Stadium, Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field. They froze at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. They visited St. Louis and Cincinnati too. They often lasted only a few innings -- just to say we were there, making incredible memories along the way.
There was also a trip to Las Vegas, before Vegas was friendly for kids, and many other trips, some to tourist favorites, some not. Lake Geneva. The Wagon Wheel in Rockton. Sault Ste. Marie. Duluth. Dubuque.
Many of these trips were memorialized in half-used matchbooks Grandpa Jack kept – passed on to Sarah and still sitting in a bowl near her bedside when she passed away. Hugo's Cellar in Vegas. The Red Geranium in Lake Geneva. The Drawbridge Inn near Cincinnati. Dozens were in that bowl, each one a cherished memory.
Later in life, Sarah enjoyed trips to Madeleine Island, Wisconsin Dells, New York City, and Jerome with Rocco, and trips with her family to places like Grand Haven, Disney World, Door County, and Boston. And camping with Pappy. Even though she wasn't able to check off a couple bucket list trips – to see the puffins (ideally in the wild, but she was ready to settle for the Saint Louis Zoo) and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City – her wandering spirit was alive and well until the end.
Sarah wasn't a huge TV fan – she was a voracious reader – but she was all in on the shows she loved. Such was the case with "Twin Peaks," at one point attending a David Lynch convention. Her passion for "The X Files" was clear, from the name of her dog (Scully) to the theme of her text ringtones. In her final months, she also happily visited the Boston apartment building used in the opening scenes of "St. Elsewhere," on a trip out East with her family.
And did she ever love the Smurfs! Papa was her favorite. She even purchased a pair of Smurfs Crocs while in Boston that now belong to her niece Shelby.
Sarah loved Christmas, asking to have the tree hung in their living room in her final weeks. She was meticulous in decoratively wrapping each present – and always found a way to choose gifts uniquely suited for each recipient. She loved "Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Muppet Christmas Carol," and had a chance to see the latter performed at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra last November.
This and every holiday season will be a little less bright without her.
Sarah would also want you to know about her struggles with her mental health. She had some incredibly dark days, but addressed them head on, with the support of family, including her first husband Tim, Rocco, friends and others. She persevered. Later in life, Sarah survived with incredible positivity, strength and mental toughness, against all odds and as her physical health waned.
Sarah's love and care for others will also endure. Even as her own health declined, she did what she could to help care for her mother-in-law, Shirley, who lived across the parking lot from her Sheboygan Falls apartment. The daily 5 p.m. "how are you doing?" check-in phone calls continued to her final weeks, like clockwork.
So it was with Sarah Koers. What an amazing woman. And effing cool.
A graveside service will be held on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at Southern Wisconsin Veterans Cemetery at 11:00 am. There will be a luncheon to follow at Route 20, 14001 Washington Ave., Sturtevant.