Dorene Kay Hagen

Dorene Kay Hagen was a longtime Spokane, Washington community volunteer and small business owner who spent her later career working in non profit administration before opening her own interior design business. She died on June 13, 2026, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane at the age of 86.

Hagen was born in North Dakota and grew up in Spokane, where she graduated from North Central High School in 1957. She later moved to Seattle to study at the University of Washington, earning a bachelor's degree in home economics in 1961. She married young, and the marriage ended in divorce about a decade later. She went on to raise three children, Christopher, Erin and Kristen, largely on her own in California and Maine.

For much of her adult life Hagen worked in non profit administration, a field that let her pursue what reports describe as a lasting commitment to social justice and community development. In 1993 she moved back to Spokane and started an interior design business, a venture that let her combine her practical training in home economics with a creative eye that friends traced back to her school days, when, as her obituary notes, she graduated from North Central High School in 1957, where her love of dance began.

Hagen was known in Spokane as a civic volunteer who gave her time to a wide range of causes. She was involved with the local NAACP chapter, Spokane Preservation Advocates, the Spokane County Democrats, the community group Growing Neighbors, and the nonprofit Magic Lantern. Outside of her volunteer work, she was remembered as someone who loved to read, dance, travel and host family and friends.

Hagen's death was first reported through a published obituary rather than through news coverage, and no cause of death has been made public. She was predeceased by her daughter Kristen Lynch and by her parents, Kenneth and Henrietta Hagen. She is survived by her son Christopher Lynch, her daughter Erin Lynch and Erin's partner Jeff de Almeida, her goddaughter Allison McKee, her brother Ken Hagen and sister in law Bonnie Hagen. No public memorial service details have been reported as of this writing.