No matter when, no matter where, when Frank Nicholai gets a call asking if he will build a traditional Russian Orthodox cross or coffin for someone from his home region in Western Alaska, he does it.
"I can't say no to anyone who asks," he said in his apartment in Anchorage's Muldoon neighborhood on Wednesday morning. "It comes from here," he said, patting his heart.
On Wednesday, Nicholai, who hails from the Kuskokwim River village of Napaskiak, spent the day finishing a wooden Russian Orthodox cross for his daughter, Megan Sophie Johnson, who was found dead Sunday afternoon in an alcove at Muldoon Road Baptist Church, less than half a mile from Nicholai's house.
The cross, leaning against his living room wall, painted white with delicate pink trim and blue lettering, was almost done. On it were the dates of Megan's birth and death. She died 11 days before her 15th birthday.
Nicholai is preparing the cross for travel to Napaskiak, where Megan will be buried next to her mother, Andrea Nicholai. Her father said he picked pink to complement the cross of her mother, a white one with red trim. He picked blue for the lettering of Megan's name because it was her favorite color, one she always painted her fingernails.
At a memorial service in Anchorage on Wednesday -- conducted in English, Russian and Yup'ik -- the cross was propped next to Megan's open coffin. She wore a white sweater over a white lace dress with a butterfly pin. Pussy willows with crepe paper "palms" lay in the coffin next to her, a tradition of the Russian Orthodox Easter, known as Pascha. Her nails were still neatly painted bright blue.
Megan's death came as a surprise to her friends who attended the service Wednesday. A group of mostly freshmen from Bartlett High School, the teenagers described her as sweet and outgoing -- the type of person who was nice to everyone.
She loved being outside, they said. She was up for anything -- walks, biking or playing basketball, said Devon Clark, 15.
"She didn't like being inside at all," said Bartlett classmate Tanna Murtha, 14.
John Jessen, Megan's history teacher at Bartlett, said he saw her "golden side" at school.
"She wasn't like what her end was," he said. "She was just a normal girl who wanted to do good in school."
But her father said Megan struggled with the 2009 death of her mother from exposure in Anchorage, the result of a long struggle with alcoholism. Her friend Clark, who also lost his father, said Megan would often share her grief with him.
"Half the time she would bring up missing her mom," Clark said.
Nicholai said Megan lined her room with pictures of her mother. He said she often wrote notes to her on scraps of paper or on her iPhone, expressing how much she loved and missed her.
Nicholai thinks lingering pain caused Megan to fall in with the wrong crowd. She sometimes associated with troubled kids, some of whom would hang out with adults involved in bad behaviors. He encouraged her to find better friends, but she sometimes disappeared at night and he would go looking for her.
"She was just prey to those people out scrounging around," he said.
A single parent struggling financially, Nicholai moved to Anchorage from Bethel with Megan and his 9-year-old son, Jeremy, in January 2014. He and his children were homeless for months, he said, moving from hotel to hotel until he finally found an apartment in May of last year.
Nicholai said through it all, Megan and his son understood. After they lost their mother, he said, they stuck together through tough times.
"They were compassionate," he said. "I never seen no complaint from them, regardless of hardship."
As he prepared for Megan's funeral, Nicholai thought it was appropriate that her middle name, Sophie, nearly matches that of the Russian Orthodox St. Sophia, considered the "mother of orphans," whose story is often associated with giving strength to the grieving.
Across Nicholai's living room from the cross was a coffin, ready to be sent to Bethel for the burial of another person. Nicholai had to buy a coffin in Anchorage for his daughter, he said, because he didn't have enough time to build one.
The family is traveling to Bethel on Thursday and then to Napaskiak for the funeral on Saturday.