HOLLISTER — A Native American community grieved on Sunday over the death of one of its brightest, recalling the joy of UNC-Chapel Hill student Faith Hedgepeth in church sanctuaries, living rooms and at a solemn vigil held at dusk on the sacred grounds of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe.

Hedgepeth’s body was found at her Chapel Hill apartment on Friday. Police are treating the death as a homicide.

The news has left the tribe of about 4,000 members in a rural area roughly 90 minutes northeast of Raleigh without words to express the hurt, many said in interviews.

“It is a huge, huge shock – and that’s to say the least,” said Melissa Richardson, the tribal council’s chairwoman. “Our community is just reeling from this. Numb. How could somebody do this to Faith?”

There were tears on Sunday, and hugs. And some smiles, recalling the way Hedgepeth, 19 lived. Friends said that she planned to be a pediatrician, or perhaps a teacher, and that she wanted to return to the tribe’s area to practice.

Gabrielle Evans, 20, a cousin and a close friend, said they had dreams of working together to help their area.

“She was always thinking of someone else,” Evans said. “The sweetest person ever.”

Gates Millennium scholar at UNC

Hedgepeth and Evans both won scholarships from the Gates Millennium Scholars program, giving them a full ride to UNC system schools after “we both worked our butts off for it,” Evans recalled.

The award letters arrived on a Saturday. The next day, at the tribe’s annual powwow, tribal leaders announced the news to all. It was a moment of tremendous pride, many people remembered on Sunday, for the tribal community and for the students.

UNC plans a vigil Monday night, a gathering that comes four years after the campus grieved following the killing of student body president Eve Carson in March 2008.

At the Mt. Bethel Baptist Church in Hollister, a wake will be held Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and a funeral on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The church was a place that was a formative part of Hedgepeth’s life. Her Sunday school teachers spoke of Hedgepeth’s infectious smile. A deacon remembered that children always looked up to her – “the children stuck right to her,” McConnel Silver said.

“You send a child off to college and you think they will be safe,” Silver said. “This … this … this … throws your whole balance in life off.”

Hedgepeth will be buried in the church cemetery.

The church pastor, Willie Silver, recalled on Sunday that Hedgepeth was one of the first to be baptized in the church, rebuilt in 2000 after a fire.

Silver called worshippers to the altar on Sunday, and Evans was the first, embracing the pastor in a long hug as the congregation sang “Amazing Grace.”

“Lord,” the pastor said, “we need each other at times like this.”

Later, as an orange sunset melted into darkness, tribal leaders led a gathering to remember Hedgepeth. It came together in less than day. More than 1,000 people showed up, encircling the grounds and filling bleachers typically used for the annual powwow.

Drummers played and dancers joined in an intertribal dance as Hedgepeth’s family looked on. At one point, many of those in attendance danced in a circle around burning incense. Later, there was an “honor” song.

Hedgepeth’s sister, Rolanda, said Hedgepeth loved her ancestry and her church.

“She was very much loved, and we are very much hurt,” Rolanda Hedgepeth said.

Hedgepeth was especially close with her mother, Connie, and they were last together a week ago to celebrate her mother’s birthday.

Questions surround death

Marty Richardson, a doctoral candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill and a member of the tribe who knows much of its history, said he saw Hedgepeth on campus the day before she died.

She was working on a video project for an anthropology class, she told him, and would need his help. The project: She wanted to study the process tribes follow to receive state or federal recognition.

The pastor’s wife, Cynthia Silver, said Hedgepeth helped with mission work and an active teen group in the church.

“Native people are very clannish, in our families and our community,” she said. “You’d have to go 10 miles in any direction to find someone who didn’t know her, her mom, her sister. There’s just a lot of people affected, like we’re all in a tailspin.”

She said the tribe has dealt with sudden sickness, even car accidents.

“But when violence comes against a person – someone so special like Faith – you wonder what could ever drive a person to attack a child? It’s scary.”

Juliet Evans, a family friend who taught Hedgepeth in Sunday school, was like many here who wonder what really happened.

It was a common question, with police saying little to the public.

“Knowing Faith the way I knew her – she was like a lamb, so humble, so innocent – you can’t imagine who would ever want to hurt her,” Evans said.

Some arrived at Sunday’s vigil with “Justice for Faith” painted on their car windows. A collection was taken up, with word that it may be needed to increase reward money for information.

The tribe’s chief, Ronald Richardson, also wonders what happened. On Sunday, he said the moment now was to honor and remember. The tribal government lowered its flag to half staff in her honor.

“She was the epitome, the personification of love, laughter, joy,” he said. “She was just exploding with life and she had her whole life in front of her. So this is tough, no other way to say it.”

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