She died with no known family in America.
Daoyou Feng, 44, of Kennesaw, Georgia, was one of eight people — six of them women of Asian decent — killed in a gunman’s rampage on March 16. She was a Chinese citizen and had been working in the spa for only a short time before the shooting.
With no family able to come to Georgia to arrange her funeral, local Chinese American community leaders organized a service for Feng this Sunday in Norcross, according to Lee’s Funeral Home. Efforts to organize the funeral were started by a local Chinese American organization, whose name wasn’t immediately available.
It’s a show of solidarity and kindness with the victim whose name has come up least often in media coverage, seemingly in large part because she didn’t have known relatives in the U.S. who can speak on her behalf and tell who she was.
One longtime customer of Young’s Asian Massage, Greg Hynson, said he wished he’d known her better. Hynson, a frequently pained former bodybuilder, was a friend of owner Xiaojie Tan, who died two days before her 50th birthday in the shooting. Hanging around the shop, Hynson, Tan and Feng spent time together.
To Hynson, Feng seemed to be a kindhearted woman who was easy to get along with.