Las Vegas shooting victim Barnette ‘would have been great mother’

There were few if any delicacies that Carrie Barnette enjoyed better than a well-prepared pickle.

Fried pickles. Pickle-flavored chips. A dill pickle topped with mustard. Barnette enjoyed them all.

Even when she and lifelong friend Jenn Gibson were enjoying tacos at the Route 91 Harvest festival Sept. 30, pickles came up in a discussion about food vendors at concerts and fairs.

“She said ‘I’m not really a fan of fried Oreos or fried butter. I’ll just stick to my fried pickles,’” Gibson said.

Barnette, 34, of Riverside, California, was one of 58 people fatally wounded Oct. 1 when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on the country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.

Her funeral is being held Monday morning in Westminster, California. Country attire is encouraged.

Family and friends remember Barnette, a lifelong Californian, as charitable and willing to help those in need. Barnette was the oldest of three siblings and had no children, but she treated children of her relatives and friends with affection — as if they were her own.

Gibson said the compassion earned Barnette the nickname “Aunt Carrie.”

“My sister would have been a great mother,” Amy Barnette, 32, said.

Carrie Barnette, a frequenter of country music concerts, seemed destined to love country music at a young age, her sister said. In the girls’ youth, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw music played constantly throughout her grandparents’ house in Torrance, California.

Gibson was growing up across the street with her family. Gibson, now 36, said she met Carrie Barnette shortly after her birth.

Growing up, the two would spend their days running through sprinklers and playing soccer. Other times, they would pretend they ran a restaurant and serve imaginary items off a handmade menu to their stuffed animals.

As a child, Barnette delighted in the hummingbirds that would congregate at a feeder hanging on her grandpa’s porch. In 2010, she got a hummingbird tattoo on her back to memorialize him after his death.

Earlier this year, Barnette celebrated her 10th anniversary as a culinary team employee for Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, where she worked at Flo’s V-8 Cafe in Cars Land.

Barnette also recently purchased her first home in Riverside, California, so she could live closer to her sister and help raise her niece and newborn nephew, Amy Barnette said. Moving into the home with her beagle, Lucy, was an empowering moment.

“She never liked the idea of having someone tell her when to be home, how to spend her money, what to do and what not to do,” Amy Barnette said. “She liked her freedom in life.”

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477- 3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.