Raleigh man creating scholarship to honor fiancée, NC State prof fatally struck in crash
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A Raleigh man launched a fundraiser to create a scholarship honoring his fiancee.
- N.C. State assistant professor Natalia Duque-Wilckens died in a crash this month.
- Her fiance is hoping to raise $50,000 for the scholarship program in her name.
Natalia Duque-Wilckens was 70 days from marrying the love of her life when she was fatally struck by a vehicle this month.
Now, the man who planned on becoming her husband hopes to honor her memory by establishing a scholarship fund in her name.
The 41-year-old Duque-Wilckens, a native of Santiago, Chile, was an assistant professor in N.C. State’s department of biological sciences. She was fatally injured shortly after 6 p.m. Nov. 11 after a Ford pickup truck hit her as she crossed the intersection of Pogue Street and Clark Avenue, Raleigh police said.
The driver, 19-year-old Jack Etheridge of Waxhaw, was charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle and is set to appear in court in March, court records show.
Duque-Wilckens’ fiancé, Trevor Huffman, told The News & Observer he couldn’t shake the sense something was wrong when their two cats became oddly affectionate with him, refusing to leave his side.
“My gray cat laid on my neck and was so sweet to me,” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘You usually do this to Natalia, not me.’”
As he looked at the clock, Huffman, 46, realized it was 8 p.m., far past when Duque-Wilckens should have returned. He’d last seen her that morning, when they met near campus to upgrade her phone and share lunch together. Now, she wasn’t responding to texts or calls.
“Then I just said, ‘All right, ChatGPT, give me a list of hospitals,’” Huffman said.
The first hospital on the list, WakeMed, happened to be where Duque-Wilckens was listed in critical condition, he said.
By the time he arrived, she was in the operating room, where doctors fought to save her life. But the neurosurgeon who emerged told Huffman the damage to his fiancee’s brain was too severe, Huffman recalled.
Alone with Duque-Wilckens in the hospital room, Huffman called her family in Chile and held the phone up to her ear so her loved ones could say goodbye.
“It was just brutal,” he said. “And from that point, it’s just been a tsunami of grief, love, memories. It feels like a nightmare that you can’t wake up from.”
Suddenly, Huffman was planning a celebration of life instead of a wedding.
A love for animals and research
Born and raised in Chile, Duque-Wilckens was the oldest of three siblings in a family that “spoke the language of love,” Huffman said. She received her doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Chile in 2010, according to her N.C. State biography.
After becoming a veterinarian, Duque-Wilckens’ passion for research grew, and she published an award-winning paper on the importance of socializing animals used in research to avoid skewing data. That award paid for her Ph.D. in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis, Huffman said.
Duque-Wilckens then moved to Michigan to work at Michigan State University, where she discovered her passion for mast cells, a type of cell described by the Cleveland Clinic as “the body’s alarm system.” She was interested in how mast cells in the brain impacted behavior, according to Huffman.
“She used to show me pictures of mast cells like they were artwork,” he said fondly.
As an animal lover and vegan, Duque-Wilckens struggled with the need to use mice in her research, Huffman said. She championed the ethical treatment of research animals and built housing for her mice colonies carefully designed to give them the best quality of life possible.
“She really cared about her animals,” Huffman said. “It was really hard for her to work with mice.”
That same care led the couple to share four cats and a dog in the almost three years they spent together. The pair met on a dating app in Michigan, shortly after Huffman returned from several years coaching a professional basketball league in Belgium.
“I saw a picture of this beautiful woman with these big eyes, a green shirt that I think she had on and another picture of her as a scientist,” he recalled. “You could just see the passion and the joy that she looked like she had for her work.”
Duque-Wilckens and Huffman became friends, then a couple, and the Michigan native felt pulled to move with Duque-Wilckens when she got the job at N.C. State.
She proposed to him during a trip to Wilmington that year, Huffman said.
The pair built a life together, moving into a home in East Raleigh and pursuing hobbies they loved. Duque-Wilckens was also a skilled artist, and she’d begun taking acrylic painting classes. Huffman wrote music, and the couple took pottery classes together through the Raleigh Parks, Recreation and Cultural Development department.
By the time of the crash, the couple had big plans. They were set to marry Jan. 20 in Chile. Email invitations had gone out a week before Duque-Wilckens’ death. Once Duque-Wilckens gained tenure, they hoped to move to the countryside and operate a rescue farm for animals, Huffman said.
“That was something on the horizon for us,” he said.
In the wake of his fiancee’s death, Huffman fought through the grief to focus on what she would have wanted: the continuation of her love of nature, science and animals. After speaking with Duque-Wilckens’ colleagues about an endowment fund, he started a Gofundme last week, seeking $45,000 to establish a scholarship fund in her name.
“The outreach has been just amazing,” Huffman said.
The fundraiser, which had earned over $40,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, has received support from all over the world, including Duque-Wilckens’ native country. Huffman hopes to raise at least $50,000 to create an endowment fund, then grow the program from there.
“Legacy — I don’t know if that’s the right word to me. It’s just [that] she’s passing her love and light and her work on to the next generation of scientists,” he said. “I just say, ‘What would Natalia do?’ And I hope that I’m doing something right.”
This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
