Livermore Woman Continues Her Late Daughter's Bucket List

LIVERMORE, CA — There’s a photo of a young Livermore girl with an ebullient smile that has traveled around the world. Scores of people have taken the same image to Niagara Falls, fields of poppies, even the Taj Mahal. One woman even sewed the photo into her wedding dress, and walked the girl down the aisle with her.

That well-traveled photo is of Kristina Chesterman, a Granada High School graduate and Chico State nursing student who was killed by a drunk driver in 2013 at age 21. Not long after her death, her mother Sandra was cleaning out her apartment and found a handwritten list inside a makeup bag that her daughter likely wrote in high school of everything she wanted to experience in life. The list shows a kind-hearted, ambitious adventurer who hoped to, among many other goals: travel to every continent; visit all 50 states; travel to at least four of the Seven Wonders of the World; own her own business; own two pieces of property; get married; have kids; and save someone’s life.

“As soon as I found it, I knew we had to do what we could on the list,” Sandra told Patch. A framed photo of Kristina accompanied her to Niagara Falls, atop a hot air balloon, on first class of an airplane, through poppy fields, and on a flying lesson. Her husband took Kristina’s ashes with him in the passenger seat to Chicago via Route 66. Nearly a decade later, she feels ready to complete as much of the list as possible.

“I just kind of felt ready,” Chesterman said. “There’s a street that was named after her that is behind me that just made me want to continue on with that list.”

That includes going skydiving, parachuting, riding a camel, and visiting Venice and the Smithsonian Museum. Chesterman is still trying to figure out the best way to get hold of a camel, so if readers have any ideas, feel free to get in touch.

“I’m apprehensive, but I’d like to at least look into [going skydiving],” she said. “I know she would’ve loved that.”

Even if Chesterman and her family aren’t able to check off every item, people around the world have. The story of the Kristina Chesterman bucket list went viral, and was covered everywhere from the Today Show to CBS to The Toronto Star to The Daily Mail, and many more. People all over the world began completing items from the list, including the enterprising bride who sewed Kristina’s photo into her wedding dress so that Kristina could “get married.”

One of the people was a retired nurse from Campbell named Susan Vieira. About a year after Kristina’s death, a friend alerted Chesterman to a message on the Remembering Kristina Chesterman Facebook page that read simply, “Hi my name is Susan Vieira, and I believe I have your daughter’s heart. Please call me.”

Vieira had recently received a heart transplant, and then read about Kristina in The Mercury News. She realized that Kristina was an organ donor, and the timing added up. Chesterman had also been told that Kristina’s heart had gone to a 63-year-old woman in the South Bay. Vieira tried to complete as many items as she could, including riding a camel and learning how to fly a plane, before she passed away from cancer.

When Chesterman met Vieira, they hugged, and she said it was like listening to her daughter’s heartbeat again. “It just felt so good to be close to Kristina’s heart,” Chesterman told ABC News. “It was almost as if Kristina hand-picked Susan…the heart is who you are, and I think Susan is the perfect person to get this.”

Chesterman said that she’s been able to get in touch with all of the other people who received her organs. Kristina has been able to save many lives, like she said she wanted to.

“She from a very early age was very compassionate, very kind and loving, the kind of person people were drawn to from so early on,” Chesterman said. “People would always say when she was young that she was an adult already. She was an old soul, is what people said about her…I’m not surprised that she wanted to be a nurse.”

That particular legacy is being honored through the Kristina Chesterman Memorial Clinic, a hospital in rural Nigeria that opened in 2019. Kristina hoped to volunteer for Doctors Without Borders in Africa after graduating nursing school. When Kristina’s old nursing instructor said he wanted to honor her memory in some way, everyone decided that opening up a hospital would be best. Over the next few years, the Chestermans managed to raise roughly $125,000 to open the hospital. Each January, nursing students from her alma mater Chico State visit on a mission to help patients in the underserved area.

The Chestermans have also founded the Kristina Chesterman Memorial Foundation, which helps operate the hospital, runs the Kristina Chesterman Memorial Nursing Scholarship, which will help nursing students at Chico State for the next 65 years, and has raised over $20,000 for Doctors Without Borders.

“I always try to think of what she would want for us, and as sad as I am, I try not to focus on the one night that she died,” Chesterman said. “I try to focus on all the days she lived.”

Kristina’s full list:

• Be in four places at once
• Go to Venice
• Learn to play chess
• Beat someone at chess
• Save someone's life
• Own two pieces of property (one with livestock)
• Manage or own my own business
• Get married
• Have kids
• Learn to fly a plane
• Go to four (out of seven) wonders of the world
• Fly first class on a plane
• Visit the 50 states
• Ride in a hot-air balloon
• Go parachuting
• Go sky diving
• Ride a camel
• Travel to all the continents
• Be remembered as "the smiley girl"
• Break up a fight between two guys over me
• Be in homecoming court
• Run through a poppy field
• Tour Niagara Falls
• Go to the Smithsonian
• Drive Route 66