By Lisa Ryckman
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Rachel Joy Scott. Her middle name said it all.

Saturday, nearly 2,500 people came to praise her and to bury her in an ivory casket covered with the scrawled names and wishes of her friends and classmates. They arrived early at Trinity Christian Center and stood in line to sign it.

While My Heart Will Go On played in the background, hundreds of mourners celebrated the life of a 17-year-old who seemed lighted from within, who reached out to those who didn't quite fit in, who sometimes wondered how to fit in herself.

Rachel came into her own on the stage or in front of a camera. Family photos compiled into a video for the service showed her as she was: laughing baby, toddler sleeping in her high chair, young beauty in a long gown.

She was an actor, a clown, a girl who wore sunglasses to the prom and once stuffed 24 marshmallows into her cheeks to win a "Chubby Bunny" contest.

Her parents had expected a boy on Aug. 5, 1981, and had picked out the name Craig. That name later went to her brother.

In the end, it was Rachel's fervent desire to please other people that put her in the line of fire.

"She occasionally smoked. And I was on her back, all the time," said classmate Nick Baumgart, who took Rachel to the prom last Saturday. "Finally, she promised me she would quit before she went to prom. She did it for me."

Tuesday, Rachel wasn't outside in the student "smokers' pit" where she used to hang out during fifth hour. Instead, she was in the line of fire.

Rachel had a passion for theater, for speech and the arts. She had just performed in the Columbine school play, Smoke in the Eyes, and she was writing a play to perform in senior year.

Her love of drama was rivaled only by her love of God, her friends said. She thought about graduating early to travel with a Christian drama team and become a missionary or work with troubled youths.

"When she came into my class, she was going through some difficult family times. But you wouldn't know that at all," said Vlinda Childs, who supervised the Christian scouting program that Rachel joined in sixth grade.

"Because she shined. She shined for God at all times. She made a choice to love life."

And she loved people. A friend remembered how Rachel enthusiastically offered to trade Halloween costumes with him when they were in fourth grade after he told her he felt humiliated by his homemade Zorro outfit.

"Life was just like one big amusement park to Rachel," he said.

Rachel spent spring break in Albuquerque with her friend Alisha Basore, shopping for things for the apartment they planned to rent together in August.

"She saved me in so many ways," Alisha said. "She taught me the value of life. She taught me to love every second you have."