CHATSWORTH, Calif.—AVN Hall of Fame performer Karen Summer passed away early Monday morning from lung failure, her life partner David Pillow told AVN.
Summer had also been battling breast cancer off and on since 2020 and had been hospitalized for the past month before entering hospice care on Saturday in Pompano Beach, Fla. She was 61.
“Her lungs started to fail,” Pillow said. “It didn’t really have anything to do with her cancer.”
He told AVN that Summer had recently been diagnosed with hypercapnia, a condition in which a person has too much carbon dioxide in their blood.
Pillow said a month prior to her going to the hospital that Summer had been experiencing the same type of symptoms that they had long associated with her cancer battle.
“We had no idea what was truly going on,” he said. “Once she was in the hospital, her CO2 levels were way high.”
According to a GoFundMe page set up by Pillow in 2020, Summer was first diagnosed with "an aggressive form of breast cancer" in August of that year.
Despite her high profile from her adult movie career, Pillow said Summer was a private person.
“She didn’t want people to know her issues,” he said. “She never wanted anyone to know how difficult her struggles truly were or how bad she was hurting or feeling. She was always more concerned with everybody else than herself.”
David met Karen on an online dating site when she was living in Redding, Calif., and he was staying with his brother in Temecula in September 2013.
“She’s been my heart for 10 years,” David said. “At the time we met I was broke, unemployed and staying with my brother trying to build a life out there.
“She took a chance on me and she gave me purpose. She was as kind and as sweet as anyone you’ll ever meet. She was fiercely loyal as well.”
Pillow said Summer was not focused on material things.
“She loved people for their character and their personality,” he continued. “She was a sucker for a lost cause. … Some ladies are absolutely batshit crazy and the more batshit crazy they were, the more she freaking adored them.
“She had been been part of the AA community for many years. She befriended all of us wandering, lost souls.”
David said Karen was a big fan of Barbara Streisand.
“And being a California girl living in Florida she loved the beach and the ocean,” said Pillow, a native of Illinois who added they had been living together for the past eight years in Florida. “In a lot of ways she just wanted to live a humble life and be a great life partner to me.
“From the time we started dating there was not a day that went by that I didn’t see her face or hear her voice.”
Summer, who did the bulk of her on-screen work during the 1980s, enjoyed something of a career resurgence beginning in 2014.
In a 2014 interview with AVN about her return to performing, Summer revealed that she originally found her way into the business while working as a production assistant and stand-in for The Dukes of Hazzard.
"Here we are on our last season," she told AVN's Mark Kernes. "My girlfriend, who was my best friend in school—we lived down the street from each other, grew up in Tarzana and Encino—is working as a cocktail waitress at El Torito when it was on Ventura Boulevard. After work one day, I go by the bar to pick her up, because we're going to go out that night, and who's sitting in there, surrounded by a bunch of young women, but Jim South? And he approaches us and asks if we would be interested in doing modeling. And within a week, I'm off of the Burbank backlot and I'm, you know, naked! Saying 'How you doin’?'"
She would go on to star in classics including Hal Freeman's Shades of Ecstasy (1983), John Stagliano's Bare Elegance (1984) and five movies for Kirdy Stevens, who she said was her favorite director, including Taboo 4 and 5.
During her mid-2010s comeback, she also made a non-sex appearance in director Will Ryder's Love, Sex & TV News.
Ryder recalled to AVN Monday: "Karen's humor and timing were a director's dream, and she added a welcome spark on my set. Such somber news for one of the best comedic actresses to play the game.”
The same year of that movie's release (2015), Summer was inducted into both AVN and the X-Rated Critics Organization's Halls of Fame.
Fellow AVN Hall of Fame star Jeanne Silver, in her Facebook post today about Summer's passing, wrote, "You will be deeply missed. Your beautiful kind heart and soul will never be forgotten."
Added industry publicist, actor and talk show host James Bartholet, "Karen was a wonderful woman, and co-star and former client. Everybody loved her—fellow stars, directors and fans. We have a lot of great memories with her, and she'll always be in our hearts."
At press time a GoFundMe had been launched to help with Summer's final expenses.
Click here to donate.
Photo by Rick Garcia/@industrybyrick from the 2015 AVN Awards Nominations Party Red Carpet
