Tragedy struck the Crabbe family in 1957. When Crabbe's daughter "Sande" was a 20-year-old college student at USC, she had an obsession with dieting. She thought she needed to be as thin as possible for boys to be attracted to her. Her parents were worried. They got medical treatment for Sande and psychoanalysis, but she died April 10, 1957 of malnutrition. She weighed .