SEQUIM — A Port Angeles woman who died Tuesday morning in a one-vehicle wreck was new to the community but had already made a positive impact on those who knew her, said a friend.
Natasha Wiechert Rutherford, 24, was driving westbound on U.S. Highway 101 near Sequim Bay Road at 12:20 a.m. when her 1995 Dodge Neon veered off the highway and hit a tree, the State Patrol said.
The wreck was in an area known as prone to crashes.
Rutherford had moved to Port Angeles from the Tacoma area “a few months ago,” said her friend, Candy Filion of Sequim, in order to move closer to her mother and help recover from an alcohol addiction.
“[Tacoma] wasn’t healthy for her,” she said.
“She wanted to start a new life.”
Here, Rutherford was a resident of a home for women recovering from drug and alcohol addictions, which she helped set up, and was seen as a role model for those who lived there, Filion said.
“She let us know that we were not alone,” said Filion, who had lived in the home with Rutherford and four other women.
“She had a backbone that all of us envied.”
Filion, 36, said Rutherford had recovered from her addiction and moved out of the Pine Street home, known as the Bella Oxford House, about a week and half ago.
“Everything was going good for her,” she said.
The residence is one of five recovery homes, known as Oxford houses, in Port Angeles, Filion said.
The State Patrol said that neither drugs or alcohol were involved in the wreck.
The State Patrol has listed the stretch of highway that the wreck occurred on as a “high-accident corridor.”
A guardrail was installed in 2007 about a mile away from the site of Tuesday’s wreck in response to three serious wrecks that occurred that year.
Two of those wrecks also involved a car hitting a tree.
Rutherford was not wearing a seat belt, the State Patrol said.
Trooper Krista Hedstrom, agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that it’s unknown why Rutherford wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
The cause of the wreck remained unknown Tuesday.
Rutherford is the sixth person to die in a vehicle wreck this year on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Each fatal wreck occurred in Clallam County.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
