Sandra Jean Miller

Treasured single mother and beloved Navy veteran, Sandra “Sandy” Jean Miller, born October 28, 1965, crossed the threshold from her earth walk to her divine next chapter on July 27, 2025. If it were up to the will of her soul, her organic body would still be with us, thriving. She is survived by her son, Emmett Jean Miller, her longtime partner, Dave Smalls, and her son’s cat children, Bippity and Citrus.

Sandy ignored the roads previously tread by ancestors and instead labored to create her own path with no blueprints. She received her G.E.D. and completed her dental assistant training through Emily Griffith Technical College before joining the Navy. She was a formidable Scrabble player, despite not being fond of traditional book learning. Rather, she enjoyed hands-on education, making her a wonderful apprentice to any new job or life experience.

Her curiosity and zest to be a lifelong learner inspired her to dedicate nearly 30 years to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs while transitioning from dental assisting to a role in the Department of Prosthetics. Though her primary work in this office was to support veterans’ physical needs, she shined as a respected colleague who companioned veterans through the often-arduous paperwork process to access their deserved benefits. She also offered warmth and steadiness to those navigating the emotional turmoil of returning to civilian life.

At the age of twenty-three, Sandy gave birth to her only son on the most fortuitous of days: Friday, October 13th. Her passion for haunted houses and horror films was infectious, being transmitted to Emmett at an early age. Halloween and Friday the 13th were some of their classic faves, though Cujo and Candyman also ranked high in her son’s formative years. This shared horror obsession led Sandy and her son, during some of his adolescent years, to volley back and forth in cheeky attempts at elaborate scares. There was the time she called him from 7-Eleven and kept hanging up before returning home, tapping on her childhood Ogden home’s windows, leading him to hide in his grandfather’s closet. Or the time they went to see the horror film Wolf Creek on Christmas Day and her son lagged behind to crawl across the vacant parking lot before sprouting up, pounding on the driver’s side window, Sandy screaming her head off.

Perhaps the only thing she loved more than horror is rock ‘n’ roll music. Her high school priority was attending Grateful Dead shows at Red Rocks rather than doing her math homework. That was a commitment deeper than any person’s decades-long wedding vow. She and her son waited in line for hours at Tower Records to get tickets, especially to his first show which was third row seats for Aerosmith when her son was 9. She strategically realized that as an overly small child, her son had a better chance than herself at getting on stage, which through Sandy’s help, he did, being carried by Steven Tyler to “Walk this Way” or “Love in an Elevator”—depending on if you ask her or him.

Her lifelong love for Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame could only be superseded by the bravado she showed waiting in line for a Styx concert over some six years ago when she got her flirt on with Dave, the man who became her longtime partner. Sandy’s son recalls the many decades his mom went without dating, prioritizing her identity as a mother to the most profound and unconditional degree, and finally being introduced to Dave at the late Breakfast Inn, a favorite Denver diner of hers. He remembers how awkward he felt—not because of Dave or the idea of his mom dating, but because Sandy was totally lovestruck, fawning like a schoolgirl in a John Hughes film set to Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch.” Their adoration for one another would make any bystanders blush with giddiness.

Since her son was 15, during a trip to Hawaiʻi for his high school basketball team, Sandy had a dream of moving to O‘ahu, which she did November 2021. She lived there for nearly three years: soaking up the sun, wearing bikinis, drinking lava flows, and eating her favorite newly discovered sweet treat of lilikoi pancakes. She even had the opportunity to visit Big Island with Dave and regularly snuck into the Ritz Carleton’s Turtle Bay Resort with her son and her son’s girlfriend Hannah Manshel, to use the hot tubs.

She was only kicked out of Turtle Bay once.

Sandy loved without judgment and without understanding. She didn’t need to have explanations, justifications, or verifications. She led with love first and through that she taught all of those in her orbit how our one life given is to belong to one another without producing suffering.