Rachel and Audrey are twin sisters. Their parents are Eliane and Gary Markoff.

At the beginning of 1992, Rachel was found to have an inoperable brain tumor. She died nine months later, one week after Rachel and Audrey’s birthday.

Rachel’s life touched many people and there have been many tributes to Rachel from her friends and family and even those who never knew her but have been affected by her story. Rachel was a student at the Upham Elementary School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.  Students and teachers contributed poems, drawings and stories for a book published in her memory. Her classmates planted a dogwood tree outside Rachel’s second grade classroom, marked with a plaque dedicated to the memory of “A thoughtful, sweet, sensitive and beautiful child.”

Rachel was someone that drew admiring glances whenever she walked into a room.  She was a very poised and attractive young girl that exhibited a quiet strength and maturity well beyond her years. She was also athletic and often outran her father in various jaunts on the soccer field where he coached her and her sister, Audrey in Wellesley’s soccer league.

Rachel was also a person with amazing powers of concentration who could entertain herself for hours with a game or book. She liked quiet time in which she could be found deep in thought, probably thinking about her friends and family whom she loved very much. She could also be prankster. She liked to hide in her father’s closet at the end of the day to surprise him with a big hug when he entered to change out of his work clothes. Rachel was a warm, affectionate child whose love for her sister, Audrey, and her friends and family was returned four-fold.

Temple Beth Elohim dedicated a corner of its library and called it, “Rachel’s Reading Corner”.