Katie Buskey, a senior captain on Tahoma High’s girls basketball team, had pink laces in her blue Nike high tops when I saw the squad play at Kentlake on Jan. 11.

During the game I remembered admiring her shoes from the stands — blue is my favorite color — and after the Bears won I interviewed Buskey for a story.

I looked down at her shoes after I asked her a final question and saw the laces, which I didn’t notice from the stands, and made a comment about the color pink. With a 14 month old daughter I tend to notice pink more lately.

Buskey told me it was one of her best friends’ favorite colors, but she had died last year, so she was wearing it in memory of her friend.

I knew immediately who she was talking about, Sabrina Roberts, a talented actress and singer who died last February during her junior year at Tahoma High.

I told Buskey I had written about Roberts and her friend Jenna Fernandez when the pair were featured on “MADE” on MTV.

Not too long ago I wrote a story about Tammy Harris, Roberts’ mom, who has been fundraising to support the 5th Avenue Theatre’s Sabrina Roberts Memorial Scholarship which pays for summer musical theater programs.

I remember when I saw the news on Facebook last year that Roberts had died. My jaw dropped. How could such a vibrant, sweet girl die suddenly and so young?

In the decade or so that I’ve worked as a reporter, I have written about teens that have died, but never about a young person whom I had interviewed for a previous story.

When I did the story about the MTV program, I spent two or three hours with Roberts and Fernandez on a dreary winter day in early 2009 at the Starbucks in Four Corners, laughing and talking and listening to them describe the experience.

I knew both were extraordinary young women and had bright futures ahead of them. And the story was about all the things you want to see teenagers do — challenging themselves, taking risks, getting out of their comfort zone and being transformed as a result.

At the time, too, my daughter was just three months old. So, I finally had an inkling of what it must have felt like to lose a child, and my heart broke for Roberts’ family, particularly her mother.

Toward the end of my interview with Harris not too long ago, I asked my standard closing question, “Is there anything else I need to know?”

She told me that she misses her daughter. It was all I could do to not just start bawling my eyes out right there.

And it’s interesting, too, that Roberts was brought up while we stood on the court at Kentlake where Carly Stowell played basketball as a freshman on the Falcons varsity team four years ago.

Stowell, like Roberts, was also a talented performer who died suddenly. She was on a club basketball trip to North Carolina in April 2007 and was just days away from her 15th birthday.

I didn’t know Carly Stowell, but I remember sitting in the Kentlake auditorium for a memorial service for students in 2007 after I had written a story on her death with my former colleague Carly McElligott.

During the tribute, I thought to myself, “I wish I had known this girl because she seemed like the kind of kid you would want to know.”

Since then I have done stories about the Carly Stowell Foundation, set up by her parents Chuck and Elena Stowell, which provides music and sports programs for kids all over southeast King County.

Above the court at Kentlake is Carly Stowell’s jersey with her number.

Like Harris, I know Elena Stowell misses her daughter, but we seem to spend a lot of time talking about my little girl whenever we chat on the phone. I wonder sometimes if maybe I should gush a little less when I tell her about Lyla because at best such a conversation must be bittersweet.

I’ve been thinking about Carly Stowell a bit lately, too, because I enjoy writing about the Foundation and keeping people up with what’s going on as the nonprofit grows. There’s something important to me about keeping her name on people’s minds, too.

Plus, it seems like the song, “Over My Head (Cable Car)” by the Fray, has been popping up around me a lot lately. It’s one they played at her tribute at Kentlake. I think someone said it was one of her favorites. I had that song on my cell phone for a while after that as my ringtone.

The Stowells plan to have another major fundraiser in the spring and I look forward to writing about it.

I’ll also catch up with Roberts’ mom toward the end of the school year to find out how much money she raised.

Buskey’s tribute of pink shoelaces is more powerful for me than maybe she realized. It reminds me not only of two amazing young women gone too soon but of all the things in my own life to be thankful for, especially my daughter, who wears a lot of pink.

It also makes me appreciate the opportunities I have as a journalist to meet some amazing local teens and write about them.

So, maybe in February as the first anniversary of Roberts death approaches, I’ll wear some pink in her memory, too.