Austrian-born Sao Nang Thu Sandi (aka) Inge Eberhard, wife of the last Saopha of Hsipaw State, Myanmar, died in the United States on February 6.

At a party for international students, she met Sao Kya Seng, a Myanmar engineering student from the Colorado School of Mines. She fell in love and they were married at the home of a friend, in Colorado at 7 March 1953.

After their marriage, they turned to Hsipaw town, Shan State, and worked on regional development. They had three daughters.

After cabinet change in 1962, Sao Kya Seng serving as parliament member of Hsipaw State was arrested and his wife was put under house arrest for two years.

Sao Nang Thu Sandi fled to Austria in 1964 where she stayed with her parents for two years and moved to the United States. She became a high-school German teacher at Centennial Junior High School and Fairview High School, both in Boulder, Colorado. In 1968, Eberhard met and married her second husband Howard "Tad" Sargent. She retired from her teaching career in 1993.

She and her husband founded Burma Lifeline in 1995 to help Myanmar refugees. She won a United Nations Association International Human Rights award in 2000.

Sao Nang Thu Sandi authored and published “Twilight over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess” in 1994. Her biography book was made into a film The Last Mahadevi in 2000.