Tawn Mastrey, a well-regarded heavy-metal disc jockey who built her reputation in the late 1980s at KNAC-FM when the radio station was the official outlet for the then-thriving metal scene in Los Angeles, has died. She was 53.

In lieu of flowers, the Mastreys have requested that friends honor Tawn's memory through the Family Memorial Fund.

Donations may be sent to: Jo Hiner 1701 Taylor Street NE Minneapolis, MN 55413 Memorial Service will be held 3 PM Saturday, October 6 2007 200 Central Ave. S.E. Minneapolis, Minnesota (612) 379 2368

Ms. Mastrey died Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis from the effects of hepatitis C, her sister, Cara Mastrey, said. Tawn Mastrey had contracted the disease as a child.

More recently, Ms. Mastrey hosted the daily metal show "Hair Nation" on Sirius Satellite Radio but left in June when she became too ill to work.

"Tawn was a key figure in the heavy metal scene and was a DJ at influential hard rock and metal stations in Los Angeles, San Jose, Portland and Minneapolis," Sirius Satellite Radio said in a statement on its Web site.

At KNAC, Ms. Mastrey became known as "the leather nun," a nickname she once said was given to her early in her career by a program director at a San Francisco-area radio station who thought she resembled an animated character from a German comic book of the same name.

"She was unique because she had lived the life of a rock star and could portray that on the air without sounding arrogant or unapproachable," Gregg Steele, senior director of music programming for Sirius, told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. "She knew how to speak the language of fans of that music."

"Heavy metal fans know what they want, and when they don't get it, they let you know," Ms. Mastrey told The New York Times in 1991. "Someone at KNAC once played 'Helter Skelter,' and we got a lot of listener complaints. Not enough edge."

Reacting to Jethro Tull receiving the first heavy-metal Grammy Award in 1989, Ms. Mastrey said in the same story, "If I played Jethro Tull, the station would get bombed."

Her radio career began in 1972 and included stints in San Francisco and San Jose.

In 1989 she left Long Beach, Calif.-based KNAC, which was plagued by a weak signal, for KQLZ-FM, a station that billed itself as Pirate Radio and played modern rock.

"When Pirate Radio offered me three times the money with the promise of rocking in Los Angeles officially, it was an offer I couldn't refuse," Ms. Mastrey said in a 2001 interview with the Web site Metal Sludge.

She regularly lent her voice to "Nights With Alice Cooper," a syndicated weeknight radio show, and was host of "Absolutely Live High Voltage," a biweekly Westwood One program that airs nationally and features bands such as Trapt and Korn.

When Ms. Mastrey became critically ill, local metal bands staged a Huntington Beach, Calif., concert in July to raise money to help her pay medical bills and call attention to hepatitis C. Metal Knights, a local metal tribute band, headlined the show.

In a release about the concert, the band said, "The name Tawn Mastrey is synonymous with the world of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. The '70s, '80s and '90s rock scene would not be what it was and is today without this wonderful voice that uplifted so many major acts."