Kathy passed away from a drug relapse in 1988 after a few years of dedicated sobriety.
For a little while, Kathy managed to achieve the middle-class suburban lifestyle she had always desired. In the early 1980s, she met her eventual partner George Multon, and he moved her in with him in the upscale suburb of Montclair. The two had a son, Matthew, and his birth drove Kathy to enter a rehab program. Though she managed to stay sober for a couple years, she died after a single incidence of relapse in Berkeley when she was thirty-one years old.