Circle of friends mourns traffic reporter.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

You might remember her as the "karaoke jockey" at the Red Lion Inn. Or as the award-winning traffic reporter for KPNW-AM. Or as "Little Red Riding Hood" at the Valley River Inn's annual "Festival of Trees." Or from local TV commercials, films, plays, books and bands.

Or maybe you just remember Ronny Turrell as your best friend since middle school.

"She was really funny," said Sherri Willard Argyres of Corvallis, a friend of Turrell's since their days at Eugene's Spencer Butte Middle School in the 1970s.

"She really loved a lot of people and a lot of people really loved her. She was very warm and accepting of others."

Turrell, whose birth name was Rhonda Mobley and married name was Rhonda Hass, died Wednesday after an almost two-year battle against ovarian cancer. She was 42.

"She had more energy than 10 people, and she just loved people," said Lee Chabre, KPNW's program director. "I never saw her in a bad mood, ever."

A 1981 graduate of South Eugene High School, Turrell was involved in theater and singing from a young age, Willard Argyres said.

In fact, she formed a band called Riffle that played hit songs from the 1950s, '60s and '70s shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. She was the lead singer, recently performing songs such as the B-52s' "Love Shack" at a Nov. 19 benefit at the Red Lion Inn on Coburg Road that raised $4,000 for home hospice care.

"She was just wonderful (that night)," said Leigh Anne Jasheway, a Eugene stand-up comedy teacher and writer who also described Turrell as "my best friend."

Jasheway and Turrell published a book in 2002 called, "If I Was a Dog, I'd Be a Better Person." Jasheway wrote it and Turrell created the illus- trations.

"She knew hundreds if not thousands of people," Jasheway said. "And whenever anybody new was introduced to her, they felt like they had known her forever."

Jasheway and Turrell were part of a local social group that called itself "Misbehavin' Women."

This fall, the group, which included local TV anchors Shelley Kurtz and Kelli Warner, went bowling at Firs Bowl on River Road. Turrell brought along index cards with sayings such as "Don't Quit Your Day Job," "You Wuz Robbed!" and "You Suck!" written on them. She held one up after each roll of the ball, Jasheway said, giggling at the memory.

"And she held them up when she bowled, too," particularly the latter sign, Jasheway added.

Turrell was a traffic reporter for KNPW, and the other Clear Channel cluster of local broadcast stations that include KDUK-FM, KOOL 99.1 and KMTR-TV, for the past 3 1/2 years, Chabre said.

She won first place for traffic reporting the past three years in the state's Associated Press broadcast competition for stations outside the Portland metro area, he said.

Chabre first asked Turrell to give traffic reporting a try in 2002.

"She was a natural," Chabre said. "You would have thought she'd been doing it for years."