Paying tribute to Joanne Tran

Dear family and friends,

With great sadness, we announce the passing of our beloved Joanne Tran. She passed away on November 25th, 2022 at only 26 years young. Like so many during this time, we are devastated. The pain of losing someone so close to our hearts will never get easier, but we can honor them forever.

Joanne was born in Chicago, IL, and decided to start her independent life 5 years ago in Arizona. She was a 6th grade schoolteacher in Tucson, AZ and was very much happy with her simple lifestyle there. She lived for helping her students and was patient and selfless. Everyone knows Joanne as an easy-going person, as she never asked for anything. She thought of her friends and family before herself. Joanne was kind, respectful, down-to-earth, humble, and full of contagious positivity. Joanne would make you laugh with every encounter because she lived for happy moments.

As you can likely imagine, these times have not been friendly to my family in terms of finances. She will leave behind her loving single mother and her three older sisters as her informants. We would love nothing more than to give Joanne a sensible funeral service, but we cannot do so alone. These donations will take care of her airfare from Arizona to Chicago, the funeral home costs, embalming, traditional Buddhist ceremony, and burial.

Every donation will get us closer to putting Joanne to rest peacefully. Her passing was sudden, and we would like to be transparent with you all, as we all deserve closure. If desired, please skip to the last paragraph as the following paragraph will provide clarity on her sudden passing.

Joanne was recovering from bronchitis for a few weeks and during her recovery period, she caught a cold. She is also diagnosed with asthma and as you can imagine, these are all risk factors that have contributed to her compromised respiratory system. Early Wednesday morning (11/23), she had severe difficulty breathing and texted 911 for help because she couldn't speak. As she made it out of her residence and waited for assistance, she fell into cardiac arrest secondary to asthma asthmaticus and lost her pulse. The EMTs did the best they could when they found her without a pulse, but she coded five times after. She fought hard…but every time she lost her pulse, there was less and less oxygen going to her brain. Unfortunately, this causes severe damage to brain cells, and it led to irreversible outcomes. Her passing was legally deemed brain stem death, and we couldn’t hold onto her anymore as we wanted her to reach peace.

We want to thank you deeply for taking the time to read about Joanne and for your condolences. We love her so much and want to thank everyone that has crossed paths with her. Please, share memories you had with her below. She loves and appreciates you all.

With love always,

The Tran Family