What escaped her was time.

Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president found shot to death early Wednesday morning in a quiet, wooded Chapel Hill neighborhood, was only 22. With no ID on her and a scant police description, she was cloaked in anonymity almost a mile from the campus where she was admired by many.

On Thursday, as the somber news spread through Chapel Hill and beyond, students struggled for words. UNC leaders grappled with grief.

"She had a level of commitment, passion, caring for people, that was extraordinarily rare in a person of any age." said Roger Perry, chairman of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees. "She was a person who, in my mind, was destined for great things. Not only has Carolina lost a lot, humankind, the whole world, has lost a lot."

Eve Marie Carson, a senior majoring in political science and biology, was born to Bob Carson and Teresa Bethkein on Nov. 19, 1985. At her family home late Thursday, people had gathered to grieve on her parents' lawn. Her parents and her younger brother were too grief-stricken to talk, a family friend said Thursday night.

In Athens, Ga., a college town with many similarities to Chapel Hill, Eve Carson excelled at many things -- school, sports and community spirit.

"Things just seemed to be charmed for her," said Sam Hicks, a guidance counselor and boys soccer coach at Clarke Central High School, where Carson graduated in 2004. "She was brilliantly intelligent. She was a beautiful young lady. She was fiercely competitive on the soccer field."

Hicks and Ellen Harris, a Latin teacher at the Athens high school, watched video of the former valedictorian and class president on Thursday afternoon. Their voices were hoarse from crying.

"She went through high school at the top of the heap and had not one enemy," Harris said.

In 2004, Carson traded one college town for another.

She had won a coveted Morehead-Cain Scholarship, which covers the full cost of four years at UNC-CH, as well as summer enrichment activities. Carson immersed herself in campus activities, the N.C. Fellow leadership development program, student committees, mentoring in Chapel Hill and Durham schools, study abroad in Cuba, and summers working and volunteering in Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana.

While juggling all that, Carson earned grades high enough to be inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

In April, Carson stretched her stewardship even wider, winning student body president with 55 percent of the vote.

Not only did she play a key role in deciding how nearly $500,000 in student fees were spent, but Carson automatically became a member of the Board of Trustees, where she argued for student interests such as low and predictable tuition rates.

In a narrated slideshow on the Morehead-Cain Web site, Carson described how she spent eight weeks in Ecuador one summer, living with a family, working in a hospital and teaching children. Two days a week she shadowed a doctor in a rural part of the country.

"Most of the time I was in the back room of the hospital, where their emergency room was and where the overnight patients were. So I saw a lot of surgeries, I saw a few childbirths. I caught a baby," she said with pride. "Working with [the doctor] was my favorite part of the whole summer. We drove all through the countryside. I just really got to know a side of Ecuador that I wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise."

She said she learned an important lesson: that poverty is not pitiable. She saw a respect for a nonmaterial way of life among the people there. And she learned something about herself.

"It just is great to realize that you can take it," she said. "And I learned that over the summer. That I can take it."

Whether it was with the UNC-CH chancellor, the Chapel Hill mayor or a student she just met, Carson, who happened to live on Friendly Lane, had a way that endeared people to her.

"The thing about Eve is that she was so immediately engaging with people," said James Allred, the UNC-CH student body president before her. "And she was so eager to meet people and to bring them in as part of a team. She talked a lot about joining the team."

From Georgia to Chapel Hill, Carson spoke often about her love for UNC-CH. In a video posted on YouTube, Carson, during her candidacy for student body president last year, bubbled over.

"I love this university," she said, "and I feel lucky every day to be here."

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