Kelly's senior year of high school started well, though the harassment continued. Mike and Sherilyn Sowell asked her to hold on until graduation. Kelly had a boyfriend. She was in love, her mother said, and planning to get married.

In late October 2005, the Sowells saw a flicker of the old Kelly, the "happy-go-lucky nut" they had once known. "She was like a whole new girl," Mike Sowell said.

But shortly before she died, she'd been hassled by a couple of girls at school. Kelly cried with her mother and asked when the comments and criticisms would stop. "I told her, 'Probably never, until you get out of Moab.'" She could use the money from the lawsuit, her mother told the girl.

"But she just couldn't wait" her mom said.

The family settled the lawsuit in March — four months after Kelly died.

On Nov. 11, a Friday night, Kelly's boyfriend dropped her off at home early. She was irritated. But she and her mother didn't talk much, except to mention a relative's upcoming baby shower.

Kelly went to her bedroom about 9 p.m. About an hour later, Sherilyn went into the room looking for a laundry basket she had asked Kelly to bring out earlier. She spotted the basket, and then saw her daughter sitting in the closet, her long hair hanging over her face.

Sherilyn screamed her name.

"Our daughter's dead," she yelled to Mike in the other room. "I think our daughter's dead."

"My God, she's hung herself," Mike gasped. A dog leash was wrapped around her neck.

They called 911 and did CPR until paramedics arrived.

The scene seemed like a dream to Sherilyn.

"I just wanted to run because in a dream if you run, you wake up. I just wanted to run. I didn't care where. I just wanted to wake up."

Kelly did not leave a note. "All we have is questions, blame," Sherilyn said.

In a community plagued with other recent teenage suicides, a year of relative quiet had preceded Kelly Sowell's death.

Early the next Saturday morning, school officials worked furiously to figure out how to notify staff and students.

Coincidentally, Grand County High School had made it to the 2A state football championships and was headed for the big game in Cedar City that day. It fell to school guidance counselor Peggy Nissen to inform students on each of three buses headed there that their senior friend had taken her own life.

Nissen prayed throughout the game that her team would win. It seemed silly to her to ask for divine intervention in a football game, but she figured the student body needed something to celebrate. Grand County did win the game on that bittersweet day for the community.

"She was my baby," soft-spoken Mike Sowell said a few weeks ago.