She was the first to welcome new neighbors. She was the mother who mothered everyone's children. She was a common sight on the greenways around her Cary subdivision.

Cooper, 34, made this suburban setting her home about eight years ago, after her husband, Bradley Cooper, accepted a transfer with Cisco Systems from its Canada office to Research Triangle Park.

Both Coopers are Canadian -- he from Calgary, she from Edmonton. They met, friends said, while Nancy Cooper worked as an information technology specialist for a company where they both worked at the time.

Even then, Cooper was full of life, her sister Jill Dean said.

"She was hilarious, made everyone smile," Dean said. "No one was ever sad around Nancy."

Life in Cary seemed to fit Cooper. A natural athlete, she spent hours on the winding jogging paths surrounding her family's two-story brick home in the Lochmere subdivision.

Cooper had played competitive ringette, a game similar to hockey, in Canada and at one point hoped to play ice sports at the Olympic level, friends said. A knee injury during her team's matchup against Russia sidelined her Olympic dreams.

The knee injury couldn't keep Cooper from running, though. She had completed several marathons over the years and even recruited friends to start running with her. Cooper and friend Jessica Adam were training for a late summer half-marathon in Virginia.

The two had met at Triangle Academy Preschool, which Cooper's two daughters attended. Adam and Cooper became fast friends after they both showed up the day before preschool was set to start.

"The ease with which she bonded and made friends was amazing," said Brett Adam, Jessica's husband.

Even children flocked to her. She'd lead gaggles through the neighborhood on a hunt for frogs, even though the creatures made her squirm.

Cooper seemed to revel in motherhood, but she had hoped to go back to work after her daughters, now 4 and 2, got a bit older, said friend Damia Tabachow. In Canada, Nancy Cooper had run a clothing boutique and an information technology company, friends said.

Though she spent her days chasing after two young children, friends say Cooper always looked glamorous, somehow making even a baseball cap appear fashionable.

"Everything just came naturally to her," Tabachow said. "She made it look easy."

(Staff news researchers Brooke Cain and Lamara Williams, and Elise Stolte of the Edmonton Journal contributed to this report.)