Carrie F. Sears, 53; Retired Bond Trader, Creative Home Gardener

Carrie Francis Sears, a resident of Pacific Palisades since 2002, died at age 53 on October 29.   Carrie had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in May 2009. After much treatment, chemotherapy and radiation and clinical trials, she died suddenly, and unexpectedly, of acute cardiac arrest. Before that she had perhaps only two weeks of the kind of suffering one expects of terminal cancer, for which the family is profoundly grateful.   Born November 9, 1956, Carrie never knew her birth parents, but her adoptive parents were the film industry agent Milton Pickman and the actress Kay Buckley. She grew up in West Los Angeles, and graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1974. She received a degree in psychology from UCLA in 1978. There she met Palisadian David O. Sears, a professor of social psychology at UCLA. She later received an MBA from USC.   Carrie moved to New York in the early 1980’s, and worked for two decades as a highly successful trader of convertible bonds. She married Jim Powers, living in Connecticut and later New Orleans and Woodlands, Texas with him. They had two children, Patrick J. Powers III, currently a student at Santa Monica College, and Annabelle Powers, now in the 11th grade here at Westview School.   She moved back to California in 2002 to be with David, and they were married in a romantic wedding on the beach at Point Dume in 2004. By that time she was already suffering from multiple myeloma. She retired from her bond-trading business and developed many friends in the area, as well as creating beautiful gardens around their residence in Marquez Knolls, while inching her somewhat recalcitrant husband into some badly needed, and actually quite beautiful, home improvements.   Carrie is survived by her children, her brother Charles and his family, and David’s daughters Juliet, Olivia and Meredith, and their families.   She was an exceptionally warm, kind, compassionate, generous, intelligent and fundamentally decent human being. She loved her dogs beyond all reason, and was a committed Democrat.