Kiah Duggins was returning from visiting her mother, who was undergoing surgery in Kansas, when the civil rights attorney was killed in a plane crash in Washington, D.C. this week.
Annie Montgomery, a longtime friend of the Duggins family and associate minister at Tabernacle Bible Church in Wichita, tells PEOPLE the 30-year-old Harvard Law School graduate “loved her family fiercely.”
“She was there for them. And that’s the reason she was in town this weekend, checking on her mother,” Montgomery, 74, says.
The minister knew Duggins since about 2013, remembering her as “beautiful” inside and out.
“And I know we use that word all the time, but I absolutely mean it from my heart when I say she was beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside. And I think she was so beautiful on the outside because her beauty came from within,” Montgomery tells PEOPLE of the Miss Butler County pageant runner-up.
Montgomery adds, “She had a wonderful personality. Very intelligent, as the records will show, from high school all the way through to getting her law degree at Harvard.”
Duggins was “a very compassionate young woman,” the minister says.
“She cared about people, especially those people who were marginalized and did not have the resources to enjoy life like many other people. And so her dream job was to be a civil rights attorney,” she tells PEOPLE.
Montgomery proudly recalls many of the “amazing” things Duggins was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, adding that she “was an intern with First Lady Michelle Obama.”
She held the position in 2016 for the Let Girls Learn initiative, according to the Wichita Eagle.
Duggins “was to start as an associate professor at Howard University this coming fall,” Montgomery tells PEOPLE.
When Duggins wasn’t busy spending time with family or advocating for others, she loved to travel.
“I believe she has been all over this world, places that I wouldn’t even think of traveling to,” the family friend says.
As for Duggins’ mother, Montgomery tells PEOPLE she is “doing as well as can be expected.”
The minister says the scholar had a bright future ahead of her.
“Oh my goodness, I really expected Kiah, this is always a joke between us, I expected her to be President of the United States one day,” Montgomery tells PEOPLE. “She was on a beautiful track. And I believe the Lord used her in amazing ways. And she was only 30 years old.”
Another friend, former Sedgwick County Commissioner Lacey Cruse, wrote on Facebook that Duggins’ death was “devastating.”
“She was a brave and beautiful soul, a light in the fight for civil rights,” Cruse wrote. “Her loss is heartbreaking, not only for her family and friends but for everyone who believes in justice and equality.”
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Duggins was one of 60 passengers and four crew members aboard American Airlines Flight 5342, a PSA Airlines-operated flight that collided with a Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday, Jan. 29 around 9 p.m.
“We are coming to terms with the grief associated with the loss of our beautiful and accomplished firstborn. Please respect our family’s privacy at this time,” her father Maurice Duggins told KMUW.
The collision happened over the Potomac River as it approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. There were no survivors reported.
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