Living her passion, a young woman dies

While her friends were obsessed with dolls or ponies, for as long as anyone can remember Dianna Hanson talked incessantly of her love of lions and tigers.

“She’s always had a fascination with big cats,” Paul Hanson, her father, recalled Thursday morning. “She never played with dolls. She was a tomboy and played with boy stuff.”

“I thought she would change her mind, but it was her dream, her goal, right from the start.”