UNC mourns loss of Ph.D student Jelena Stojakovic

A 32-year-old graduate student passed away early Tuesday morning after a year-long battle with a rare form of leukemia.

Jelena Stojakovic — a Ph.D student and teaching assistant in the UNC communication studies department — was first diagnosed in the fall of 2010.

“She was very engaged and active with students,” said Wayne Rysavy, a fellow graduate student in the department.

“If anyone were to tell you about Jelena, it would be that she was vivacious and full of life.”

During the fall of 2010, Stojakovic began to have trouble sleeping. Rysavy said fatigue plagued her everyday.

“She was in a strange state,” Rysavy said. “That was when there was discussion that there could be something wrong.”

After seeing multiple doctors, Stojakovic learned that she had acute myeloid leukemia, a rare form that even after remission tends to come back.

As soon as Stojakovic found out she had the disease, students in the communications department were informed.

“I met her before we started grad school,” said graduate student Adam Rottinghaus. “We kept in touch after that and found ourselves at the same school.”

When Stojakovic moved to Seattle to receive treatment, doctors said the best option was a bone marrow transplant, but the donor had to be ethnically Serbian in order to be a match for Stojakovic.

Natalija Djurickovic, a close friend of Stojakovic, started a website to search for a donor, using a pre-existing network of anti-war Serbians from the Bosnian War to find a donor.

Djurickovic first met Stojakovic when she went to work for the United Nations during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. At the time, Stojakovic was working as a spokeswoman at the U.N.

“She spoke several languages. She donated most of her time to helping refugees,” Djurickovic said.

In the winter of 2010, Stojakovic underwent chemotherapy to treat the illness.

Stojakovic passed away Tuesday morning in Seattle.

Djurickovic said she received about 200 phone calls of condolence Tuesday from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Lebanon — all the places Stojakovic had worked during her time with the U.N.

Stojakovic’s mother will travel with her body to Chicago, then continue to Bosnia for her burial.

“She fought cancer like a lion,” Djurickovic said. “She was proud until the end.”

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