12-Year-Old Couldn’t Wait to Get Home and Back on the Ice. Then She and Her Mom Died in D.C. Plane Crash (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

(L-R) Olivia Ter and Olesya Taylor.Photo:GoFundMe

GoFundMe

A close friend of Olesya Taylor — who was killed in theD.C. plane crashalong with her 12-year-old daughter Olivia — remembers the last phone conversation she had with Taylor shortly before the mom and daughter boarded the doomed aircraft.

The pair were “so inspired” after attending the U.S. Figure Skating National Development Camp in Wichita, Kan., Olga Konopelko, of Burke, Virginia, tells PEOPLE.

“I said [to Olesya], ‘Don’t you need to rest after you come back? You’re coming back on Wednesday night,' " Konopelko says. “She was just like, ‘I don’t think so. As soon as we wake up, we’ll just go straight to the rink because Olivia really wants to start working on her new program.’ ”

Samuel Auxier , the interim CEO of U.S. Figure Skating, has said that28 members of the figure skating communitylost their lives. Eleven of those victims were young skaters from five different clubs — including Olivia, who belonged to the Ion Figure Skating Club — according to a tribute video shared tothe U.S. Figure Skating Instagram page.

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Konopelko says she had been friends with Olesya for about five years, and that they first met at Fairfax Ice Arena in Virginia.  “We had so much to talk about, our daughters, skating and everything,” she says.

“She had this expression,” Konopelko continues, “‘If you do something, do it with dignity.’ It means follow your principles, do it the best, do it so that other people respect you for doing that.”

For Konopelko, whose 14-year-daughter skated with Olivia, the word “determination” comes to mind when describing both mother and daughter.

“Olesya was super dedicated [to her daughter],” she says. “She was [always] looking for the best coaches she could find in any country… And if there is a rink she needed to drive to, she would drive no matter how early she needed to get up, how long the drive was, how bad she felt.”

Olivia, who had Olympic dreams, was equally dedicated to her sport, so much so that Konopelko remembers a moment when Olivia was sick — and still delivered a flawless turn on the ice. But more than that, Olivia was a role model for other young skaters, including Konopelko’s daughter.

“When Olivia was on the ice, everyone knew what they had to look up to," adds the mom. “She was training, she was pushing herself to the limits and beyond, and everybody saw that.”

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Now, without them, the local ice rink feels empty.

“My daughter is absolutely devastated,” Konopelko says. “Right now the rink is so empty in an emotional [and physical] way because they’re not there.”

Konopelko, who says she also knew three other young skaters who perished in the tragedy — Brielle Beyer, 12, Cory Haynos, 15, and Edward Zhou, 16, who were from the Skating Club of Northern Virginia — says their Virginia rink recently had a closed session to allow friends and families to grieve.

“We have so many flowers that people keep bringing in more and flowers,” she says. “It’s like you walk into our rink and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. You see all these flowers, all the monitors displaying the performances of these for skaters, and you see people crying standing there.”

“And yet all the kids want to be there,” she adds. “The only place [my daughter] wants to be is an ice rink right now. They just want to be there because they want to grieve together. She doesn’t want to go to school because the kids in school don’t understand. They don’t understand. Like she said, ‘How could they just go on with their lives like nothing happened.’ ”

AGoFundMehas been established in memory of Olivia and Olesya.

source: people.com